07 Apr 2019

Letlhakane Primary Hospital attends to all the maternity referrals in the Boteti East constituency, Minister of Health and Wellness, Dr Alfred Madigele has said.

Responding to a question in Parliament from Boteti East MP, Mr Sethomo Lelatisitswe, Dr Madigele said the hospital was also one of the two primary hospitals in the district, adding that the two hospitals served as a source to be accessed by all the people.

“My ministry mandate is to improve access to quality health services and to ensure that universal coverage to health care is realised,” he said.

Furthermore, the minister said his ministry strived to improving services rendered as evidenced by strategic placement of midwives in the catchment areas to ensure that early detection of high risks were attended to before labour and delivery.

He said it was the desire of his ministry to provide all services and health facilities being within a reasonable distance, ‘however, due to limited resources the upgrading of the health facilities is not in the plan period’.

Letlhakane Primary Hospital maternity ward, Dr Madigele said, had the official bed capacity of 11, being; three antenatal, two delivery, three premature and three post partum beds, adding that there were some occasional overflow bed capacity of 18 whereby ANC, Post partum and premature had each one additional beds and four corridor beds.

The average number of deliveries per month, he said, ranged from 67 to 80, while for the years 2016, 2017 and 2018, there were 866, 945 and 807 deliveries, respectively. The majority of the deliveries are from Letlhakane.

Currently, the minister said the maternity ward was effective and well capacitated with skilled human resource and necessary commodities to provide the service, adding that his ministry in partnership with Debswana were facilitating construction of a maternity ward within the hospital.

Mr Lelatisitswe had wanted to know if Dr Madigele was aware that all maternity referrals in Boteti East were attended to at Letlhakane Primary Hospital regardless of the areas of coverage and to state the dangers of that arrangement.

Boteti East MP also wanted the minister to state if government would consider constructing maternity ward in one of the villages outside Letlhakane and in one clinic within Letlhakane to ease congestion at the hospital.

He further enquired on the status of maternity ward at the hospital and if the ward was capacitated to effectively serve the whole constituency. ENDS