By Bida Elly David
The head of Mundri Primary Health Care Centre (PHCC) of Western Equatoria State protested over shortages of medicines and staffs in the hospital impeding service delivery in the County.
Speaking to the media yesterday, Festo Ezibon the in-charge of the hospital stated that they have been faced by numbers of challenges that had resulted to slow move of work in the hospital.
“We started facing serious challenges after Medicine Sans Frontieres (MSF) as well as Doctors without Borders pulled out of the Center a month ago. In the past, work was going on well because we were working with MSF but they pulled out and left a lot of gaps at Mundri PHCC. More than 300 patients visit the Medical Centre daily but we only have one laboratory technician and one clinical officer since the population of Mundri is too big,’’ Festo said
In his part, Alex Taban a patient attendant at the facility appealed for intervention by government authorities and people of good will specially the medical organisations to mitigate the situation.
“I have three children here in the hospital and what I have noticed in the serious fever that every patient undergo. I am appealing to our government to look for drugs to help these children because they are suffering since we have been here for the last two days now,’’ Alex said.
In addition, Mary an accompanying attendant also reiterated that the hospital faced shortage of staff and medicine.
She said that with the shortage of medicines at the medical centre, they resorted to buying the medicines from private clinics for emergencies though some patients could not really afford to buy.
“Since the medical facility went out of stock, most patients and we resorted to buying drugs from private clinic to rescue the situation. The shortage of staff is as the result of low pay since our donors stepped off their feet from us. Patients are very many with few staff. The common sickness here is malaria. We truly need help to overcome such tragedy,’’ Mary said