25 Jun 2014

Resignation of nurses at Bamalete Lutheran Hospital in Ramotswa has led to staff shortage, according to the hospital matron.

Ms Juliet Marebola said in an interview that since last year, the hospital had been having it tough, adding that so far they had employed five nurses to replace the departed ones.

“A lot of our staff members leave to join private entities while on the other hand there are those who resign for reasons well known to themselves,” Ms Marebola said.

Ms Marebola said the situation was also worsened by the fact that the Ministry of health transferred nurses and took long to replace them.

“There were no replacements but we are working hard to stabilise the situation,” said Ms Marebola. Ms Marebola said they were working together with the ministry to normalise the situation, adding that the hospital had 129 nursing staff.

She said the hospital was receiving a high number of patients as Batswana perceived it as the best public health care facility. Other challenges, she said, included shortage of sheets and blankets for patients and appealed to the donors to assist, adding that in the past they received blankets from Rotary Club and shared them with other district clinics.

For his part, the South East District Council chairperson, Mr Joseph Sorinyane said the council was aware of the challenges facing the hospital. He said the council toured the hospital to assess the situation and found that issue of shortage of blankets and sheets was not bad.

Nevertheless, Mr Sorinyane called upon the hospital to carry out postmortems on the causes of deaths recorded by the hospital. ENDS