By Mary Poni
The Ministry of Health and the General Medical Association in the country is poised to conduct scrutiny of clinics giving services to patients in the country.
While talking to No.1 Citizen Daily Newspaper in an exclusive interview, the Undersecretary in the Ministry of Health, Dr. Victoria Anib said there is a huge number of clinics in the country operating illegally.
She said there is a lot of work to be done and it needs collective responsibility from the state governments, the national Ministry of Health and South Sudan General Medical Council.
“We need to work together such that we can scrutinize the service provision. We also have association of health practitioners working in the private health sector” she stated.
She cited that the Ministry of Health is already in communication and they are planning to sit with the associations of private sector including the state governments to forge a way forward.
“These people cannot continue like that and if we are continuing to let it happen, that means we are compromising the quality of the health care being provided yet people are paying a lot of money and they are not getting the right services” she stressed.
“If you go to private facility, the expectation is that, I am paying and I should get the service required” Dr. Victoria noted.
“Most of the private clinics emerging are not necessarily doing the right things and we need to scrutinize them,” adding, “we should have some regulatory authorities managing those facilities”.
Meanwhile an anonymous medic told No.1 Citizen Daily Newspaper that what the consultants always do is to refer the patients to their clinics which is expensive.
“If the patients are having money, I don’t think they would go to public hospitals but they could have gone direct to the clinics” the medic said.
To see a doctor in most of the clinics especially in Juba, the least is five thousand South Sudanese Pounds as a consultation fee apart from lab test which each disease is paid for, apart from other things to do with the person’s treatment.