Naguru hospital: The sad story of a new health facility

Set up hardly a year ago, Naguru hospital is already suffering many woes including no pay for some of the staff.

It’s now lunch time, and some nurses are sharing lunch with families of those who had come to take care of their patients in the ward. I ask a nurse, who prefers to be called Sister Margaret, whether it is not shameful for her to share food with patients.

She freely tells me that, “The patients also know our situation. Have you heard anyone shouting at any of us for the services? We explained to them about the state of our work and they know we have not received salary for three months.”

At the time, Dr Nadumba was optimistic that the money would be paid by April. So were other senior officers at the hospital. “We have an assurance that the medics will be paid because the Finance Ministry already disbursed some Shs862.3m for salaries of the medics,” said Ms Winnie Serwanja, the principal administrator at the hospital. But even up-to-date, nurses say they have not been paid.

A vow to work
It is clear with most of the medics at the hospital, that it is the commitment they have and medical vows they took, that keep them coming back every day, otherwise they would have quit working at the hospital.

While talking to some of them, I learn that about 10 nurses and a doctor are no longer reporting to work because it is alleged that they have failed to get transport to bring them to the hospital. When I contact one of the nurses who has stopped reporting for duty, she says she had borrowed beyond what she could pay back.

“It’s better I stay home and resume work after they have paid,” she says. “I have no transport to work and I am tired of walking from Nsambya to Naguru every day,” the nurse who is supposed to be working with the emergency ward says.

I leave the hospital and go back at at 10pm in the night. What I find is a deserted facility. In that one hour visit, I manage to see five nurses on duty, two nurses attending to expecting mothers in the maternal ward, other nurses in the paediatric ward, and one nurse in the emergency ward. The rest of the departments have no attendants.

I leave the place, my heart bleeding for the patients who seek free services and instead find this at this facility.

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About Naguru Hospital

It is nearly a year since China-Uganda Friendship referral Hospital at Naguru was opened. The hospital was built by the China government as a donation to the people of Uganda.
According to Health Ministry permanent secretary, Dr Asuman Lukwago, the main aim for the upgrading the hospital was to decongest Mulago hospital.

But in what could explain the saying that, not all that glitters is gold, the beautifully light-yellow furnished facility is already facing numerous problems. The hospital which was constructed at a cost of $8m (about Shs20.8b), and a contribution of $2.5m (about Shs6.5b) from the government of Uganda, was officially opened on January 6, 2012 and started operations in June.

According to the hospital authorities, the facility is already sinking into trouble. The nurses are silently striking because they have not been paid for months. The patient turn up overwhelms the staff numbers and of recent, two administration computers have been stolen.
“We have 100 beds and yet we receive a daily turn up of at least 500 out-patients,” Dr Nadumba says. “We have only two specialised doctors, five medical officers, eight clinical officers, and the rest are nurses.”

Dr Nadumba explains that, ideally, for the hospital to fully meet its intended obligations, it requires over 500 beds. Each medical department needs a specialist, a clinical officer and five support staff.

The hospital which sits on two acres of land which was initially for the Naguru Teenage Centre has no functioning Intensive Care Unit, and it has a few incubators. The hospital director says, the hospital currently has no basics of a referral hospital. For a hospital to be called a referral, he said, it has to have a training school, departmental specialists and consultants not medical officers, and a functioning emergency ward, which is not the case with. He said, the facility is currently fit for general hospital stature.