Management at Arthur Davison Children’s Hospital (ADH) has disputed allegations that only one Doctor is assigned to cover the entire weekend on call.
ZANIS Ndola reports that ADH Executive Director Sam Phiri refuted the allegations which were published by an online publication.
Dr Sam Phiri who was speaking in an interview with ZANIS, said the hospital has adequate Doctors and that they are in a process of receiving three more Doctors in a few days time.
He said the picture published by the online publication showed patients and some mothers on floor-beds which is the case in the rain season.
He explained that during the rainy season the hospital has a lot of malaria and diarrhoea cases forcing the hospital to give patients floor-beds because they cannot turn them away.
He said the problem that the hospital has is lack of space as it caters for Copperbelt, North-Western, Luapula and Northern provinces.
He added that the hospital has already started talks for a possible expansion exercise and that the talks with the Ministry of Health have since reached advanced stage.
And Head of Clinical Care at the hospital Thomas Kapakala said it was sad that the online publication published falsehoods that were not confirmed.
Dr Kapakala said the hospital has two Doctors on-call on each and every day of the week.
“That story is not true, its not possible for one Doctor to be on-call for the entire weekend, we have two Doctors on-call on each and every day of the week, so that story is not true, am sure it is politically motivated,” he said.
Dr Kapakala said the current hospital establishment provided for 26 Doctors and the hospital has 14 Doctors and are expecting three more within the week.
A named online publication ran a story alleging that ADH was overflowing with patients, who were sleeping in corridors on mattresses, and the hospital had only allocated one doctor on call to cover the entire weekend, when President Sata and his ministers are busy in South Africa to watch football.
ZANIS
Floor beds?? Sadly the response is not convincing and far from acceptabo.
This Doctor is daft and behaving like a party cadre. Wena, Yobe, Iwe, if you were supposed to have an establishment of 26 Doctors and you only have 14 Doctors then ZWD is right about the staffing situation. Infact you only have half the number. In all probability you do sometimes have 1 Doctor on call instead of the required 2. You should start speaking for your patients and your hospital instead of justifying nonsense! Floor Beds! My foot!
gonclave u should think with ur head instead of ur ugly testicles… the doctor has made it clear that every day of the week there are two doctors on call. that makes 14 the number of doctors currently on the ground!!! simple arrithment!!! chi colour
you obviously are completely clueless regarding the nature and seriousness of this situation. This situation of kids lying on the floor is not new – been like that since at least the 80’s. It is not uncommon to have one physician ‘on call’ and in the case of an emergency, children died needlessely as one physician could not attend to all emergencies. Yengwe/Arthur Davison/davis needs to be improved and that means at a minimum – employing sufficient numbers of staff to match the number of patients at any time. however and whichever way you look at it, 2 per day is not sufficient period. Lets strive to improve healthcare and especially for the children who are our future.
so there —
since this doctor is disputing what was very clear in print – how abt sending ghost inspectors and of course, another idea is to interview current employees to shade some light on the situation. this can be achieved in a myriad of ways and all effort must be made to ensure annonymity.