EXPLAINING OULANYAH’S DEATH: How Removal of Jacob Oulanyah’s Vital Body Organ after Police Brutality in Bloody Makerere Strike Cut Speaker’s Life Short

A number of factors led to the death of Speaker Jacob Oulanyah after weeks of hospitalization.

Speaker Oulanyah died on March 20. (Read Story Here).

Oulanyah’s body was returned on April 01 amidst tears at the Entebbe International Airport. (Read Story Here).

The former speaker’s body was taken to his home in Muyenga, Kampala, on April 03. (Read Story Here).

A special sitting to pay tribute to Oulanyah happened on April 05. (Read Story Here).

During the same sitting, Health Minister Aceng gave a brief report on what exactly killed Oulanyah. (Read Story Here).

One of the conditions that contributed to the death of Oulanyah was lymphatic system depletion.

The minister reminded Parliament and nation that Oulanyah lost his spleen while he was still a student at Makerere.

During a December 10 1990 strike over cost sharing as students protested a decision by the university to abolish students’ allowances (boom), Oulanyah, who was then the speaker under guild president Norbert Mao’s administration was brutalized by police who had fired live bullets to disperse students.

Two students, Thomas Okema and Tom Onyango, were killed.

Oulanyah’s spleen was damaged and his sight badly affected.

The guild speaker’s spleen was later removed in an operation at Mulago Hospital.

“The Rt. Hon. speaker lost his spleen while he was in Makerere, he had a splenectomy [the operation to remove the spleen] following that riot,” explained Aceng.

“So, he did not have a spleen which is also an organ which manufactures blood cells – white, red, and so on.”

According to health website Health Line, “If your spleen needs to be removed, you’ll undergo a surgical procedure called a splenectomy. Undergoing a spleen removal leaves you with a compromised, or weakened, immune system. Since infections can be more dangerous without a spleen, you may need yearly vaccines and prophylactic antibiotics.”

It is therefore not surprising that the issue of Oulanyah’s spleen came up as Aceng explained the former speaker’s cause of death.

Aceng further explained that Oulanyah had “challenges with stem cells which had a poor immune response because of chemotherapy.”

The minister added: “He started having gastrointestinal bleeding or bleeding into the abdomen because of lack of platelets. He had multi-drug resistance bacteria which is usually hospital-acquired when you stay in a hospital for too long.”