Operations at Choma General Hospital have remained paralysed as the strike action by nurses and other medical personnel has continued despite the 15 percent salary increment by government.
During a conducted tour of the hospital Saturday, the Parliamentary committee on health, community development and social welfare chaired by Chikankata Member of Parliament, Munji Haabenzu, found the institution’s operations still crippled.
Acting senior nursing officer Margaret Muchanga told the parliamentary committee that only trainee nurses and senior management officials were attending to patients.
Mrs Muchanga said the institution was only attending to emergence cases in the male and female surgical wards.
“As you can see, we only have patients in the surgical wards while we have done away with patients in the medical wards for both male and female due to the ongoing strike,” she said.
Mrs Muchanga said the strike had disrupted normal operations of the hospital forcing management to devise a timetable for attending only to emergencies.
Other members of the parliamentary committee who toured the hospital were Ng’andu Magande for Chilanga, Lameck Chibombamilimo-Mpulungu, Dr Joseph Katema-Chingola, Betuke Imenda-Lukulu and Jean Kapata for Mandevu.[quote]
And Mrs Muchanga informed the committee that although the institution had been supplied with a CD4 count machine, its constant breakdown had adversely affected smooth operations in the provision of antiretroviral therapy.
“Each time it break down, there is no one who is able to repair it locally. In the last six months, it broke down 4 times,” she said.
Meanwhile, District Director of Health, Dr Rhoda Mkandawire has bemoaned the drastic reduction in government grants to both the district health office and Choma general hospital.
Submitting to members of the visiting parliamentary committee, Dr Mkandawire said the grant had suddenly reduced from K 397 million monthly to K 122 million.
The funding to the hospital had also reduced from K 110 million monthly to K 69 million.
“We have written to higher authorities explaining the implication of such reduction of funding on the delivery of health services but we have not received any response,” she said.
The committee also heard that out of the establishment of 15 medical doctors at Choma general hospital, there were only five doctors while there only 66 nurses out of the 89 provided for on the establishment.
ZANIS
The salary increment is just too small.
Awe bane lesa tatemwa ifyo mucita! In all innocence the government has endeavoured to calm the storm by offering 15% increment but that offer is rather infamous to the majority of health workers at choma general hospital if not all.Well,my concern is; how many people will suffer and die in the long run?It is inevitable that patients will not receive quality care and medication from the nurses and this will engender untimely deaths.So please mwebuteko ba fwilisheniko!