UNBELIEVABLE! District Hospital Operates At Only 17% Staffing Level
eastnews.co.ug
By Steven Enatu
KABEREMAIDO
Kaberamaido General Hospital is facing acute shortage of personnel to run the facility that was upgraded from a Health Center IV in 2019 to a District Hospital.
The facility that was elevated from the health center IV status to a hospital in 2016 and operationalized in 2019 is now operating at only about 17.5% of its established staffing levels.
Speaking to this website yesterday 10th February 2021, Joseph Esiru the facility administrator revealed that the hospital has only 46 staff including support staff instead of the 263 required number.
According to Joseph Esiru the under staffing has also led to redundancy of some equipment for imaging which were procured 4 years ago like the X-ray machine and Ultrasound.
“Ideally we are operating like health center IV, we need Five clinical officers to Man all the wards but currently we have only two clinical officers, you expect them to be in all corners, OPD, children’s ward, general ward etc and we don’t have a single specialist,” he said.
He added that the trend has forced them to over work the few staff in managing the overwhelming patients at the facility.
“We have patients as far as Alebtong district, Dokolo and across the lake Kyoga districts,” he said.
Whereas the maternity ward is the busiest, it only has five Midwives and they are forced to work throughout the day.
A staff who preferred anonymity said one or two Midwives run the ward from 8am to 8 pm.
Esiru now appeals to government through the ministry of public service and health to expedite the process of increasing the wage bill so that staff are recruited especially the key ones like Midwives, enrolled nurses and specialists to manage illness.
“We should be supported to have relevant staff, I know we may not recruit a hundred percent staff,” he added.
