TORORO – The ministry of health has delivered two additional delivery beds to equip the maternity unit at Tororo district hospital.
Delivery of the beds comes weeks when media reported about the poor state of the hospital unit, which generated public sympathy and support to the facility including conducting health run by well-wishers that yielded collection of money worth buying three beds.
The condition at the district hospital forced midwives to deliver pregnant mothers on the floor and mats since they lacked alternatives.
While handing over the beds to the hospital, the minister of state for health general duties Sarah Achieng Opendi commended health workers at the hospital for enduring to work amidst unbearable challenges facing the facility.
She said much as the media was magnifying the problem to be big, the number of the beds in the facility was adequate compared to other hospitals across the country adding that it’s not possible for more than six pregnant mothers to deliver at once that would necessitate the hospital to have more than the designed capacity beds.
The minister also thanked the district councilors for accepting to attend council meeting adding that this makes it easy for them to perform their supervisory role as politicians which had lacked.
She said politically they can disagree but they do not need to walk out of council because of this where they can deliberate on issues that affect the areas they represent.
Ms. Opendi disclosed that once they stay divided, the technocrats take it as an advantage to do their own things including staying away of their workstations to do their private businesses and by doing that it’s the common persons that is affected.
The minister appealed to development partners mainly NGO’s to reconcile their capacity building programmes with the government to avoid situations where they occupy civil servants with workshops hence affecting their ability to offer services to the people.
She said the capacity building is good but they should not affect the attendance of health workers per say.
She encouraged the hospital administration to budget for operations and maintenance for equipment that the government delivers to them.
However members of the district health and education committee of the district led by its committee chairperson Molly Chiryaappealed to the ministry to consider increasing the Primary Health Care allocation for Tororo hospital considering the number of patients its serving.
She said the old rates that government is using is inadequate to run the facility because Tororo district hospital is almost a referral hospital for Bukedi region and part of Western Kenya and this has resulted into consistent stock out of supply.
She also requested the ministry to think of procuring ambulances because the recent double pick-up ambulances it gave to district have all grounded down and this makes it difficult to respond to emergency health situations.
Jimmy Alia Apumeri challenged the government to condition all MP’s who have ambulances to have a memorandum of understanding requiring them to surrender the ambulances to local government adding that some of them are becoming a nuisance to the community.
Responding to the call for the procurement of ambulances, the minister said the government is finalizing with the coming up with ambulance policies where it’s considering to establish a national ambulance service point.
