TB referral hospital faces overwhelming challenges

Submitted by Linda Lilian (owamazima) about 1 year ago

Buhinga Regional Referral hospital located in Kabarole District Western Uganda, serves an area of about five districts in the Rwenzori region and is one of Uganda’s core hospitals affected with internal shake-ups caused by under-staffing, drug shortages and treatment failures caused by a high default rate.

The nurse in charge of a TB Ward at the hospital, Sr. Rufina Aneno said the ward is understaffed.

“We are only two staff members, supposed to do both night and day duty. So we just do day duty – at night there is no one,” she explains adding that; “we work from Monday to Friday, on weekends only one person comes to inject the admitted patients.”

Sr. Aneno who has worked in the TB department since 2007 argues that she has been requesting for more staffing and promises have been made but not fulfilled.

“We are overwhelmed by patients,” she said, asserting that most health centres in the region keep referring patients to the referral hospital because they do not work as they should.

“Patients say there are no drugs at the health centres, there are no people to serve them and some say, it is faster here than there,” she said.

Sr. Rufina said the health centre faced interruptions to anti-TB drugs in previous months despite claims by the District Tuberculosis and Leprosy Supervisor that drugs are available at the health centres.

“Drugs here are served faster and so there is always shortage,” she remarked, indicating that there were drug shortages at the hospital from March to April.

“We faced it rough till they brought the drugs in May,” she said; adding that even those supplied will not last long.

Sr. Rufina said between March and June, there were no drugs for children, so treatment had to be halted causing default.

"In May and June, no children were treated until July 11th when drugs where brought in," she said.

Keywords: Default drugs hospital patients shortage TB Uganda

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