02 Nov 2017

Kasane Primary Hospital leadership has been urged to collaborate with the health personnel in the Chobe District to promote quality health services.

Assistance Minister of Health and Wellness, Mr Dikgang Makgalemele made the plea after touring Kasane Primary Hospital to appreciate challenges faced by health personnel.

He said the hospital and council leadership should ensure that service standards were maintained, and that the public understood the importance of the 10 point agenda whose aim was to establish a conducive environment for excellent service delivery.

He said they should mobilise the community and ensure that all health structures were functional and worked as a team towards prevention, care and adherence.

He added that functional structures such as village health committees and home based care played a key role in reducing defaults among communities.

He called on village structures to join hands and strengthen the prevention of both communicable and non-communicable diseases.

“Health is a foundation of everything and we want people to be tested on time and get treatment on the right time before it is too late hence preventive care is our priority at the ministry,” he added.

He said working as a team would enable them to address challenges such as minor maintenance works at the hospital and laundry services.

He said the NDP10 review revealed that government neglected maintenance in all departments. He added that a company had been identified to focus on the matter.

He also updated them on the planned construction of a new hospital with a capacity 120 beds. He said it would start in the 2018/19 financial year and completed at the end of 2019.

The current hospital built 49 years ago, he said, was in a bad state.

Earlier, Dr Nkishi Kaybmbe of Kasane Primary Hospital informed the assistant minister and his entourage that the facility was established in 1959 with a capacity of 84 beds.

He said although it was an old hospital, it excelled in some services, noting that they had reduced the waiting time for out-patient services.

The PMCT programme, he said, was also doing well.

However, he complained that for almost two years, the mortuary had been operating with only three trays out of the nine,  and that they were at times forced to send corpses to private mortuaries.

He also stated that the laundry machines were broken and that they relied on neighbouring facilities such as Gweta.

Other challenges, he said, included shortage of doctors, noting that the district had only six doctors. He added that three were stationed at Kasane Primary  Hospital and the other three in clinics.

He said they experienced challenges when some drugs were out of stock, as they could not buy from local pharmacies because they did not have a tax clearance and that the hospital procured from Gaborone. BOPA