By Jurugo Emmanuel Ogasto
The administration of Moyo General Hospital has taken a bold step to limit ambulance services to two categories of patients that’s expectant mothers and children because of funding shortfall for fuel purchase.
This is because the general Hospital is facing financial constraints to fuel ambulances to offer the service to all.
Bernard Besi, the Senior Hospital Administrator noted that the money allocated for fuel for a quarter of a financial year has been reduced to 38 million shillings that cannot help to transport all patients who would require ambulance service.
Besi disclosed that the only categories of patients to benefit from the ambulance services are expectant mothers and children below five years in critical conditions.
However, the administration of the hospital has not made an official communication to that effect.
For the past three weeks, all the ambulances at Moyo General Hospital had been grounded because there had been no fuel at the fuel filling stations in town but also there was no money to buy fuel from elsewhere.
The non-functionality of the ambulances caused anxiety among the population as some patients whose lives could have been rescued by rushing them to the hospital reportedly lost lives due to grounding of ambulances.
Michael Adrawa, the Assistant District Health Officer in charge of Maternal Child Health, appealed to the hospital administration to make official communication to the in-charge of health facilities to the effect that, for now ambulance services have been limited specifically to category of patients due to constraints in resources to manage the fleet of ambulances.
He said a formal communication should be made so that the in-charges of the facilities are able to communicate the same to patients so that the category of patients other than expectant mothers and children below five years who would need ambulance service get to know that for them to access the service of an ambulance they have to contribute money to buy fuel for the ambulance to pick them from the various health facilities and transport to the hospital.