Oxygen plant breakdown cripples Kabale hospital
The structure that houses of the oxygen plants at Kabale Regional Referral Hospital. The plants broke down last month. PHOTO/ROBERT MUHEREZA
What you need to know:
- The hospital serves a population of about two million people in the districts of Babale, Kisoro, Rukungiri, Kanungu, and some parts of Ntungamo, as well as people from neighbouring countries of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Kabale Regional Referral Hospital is struggling to offer health services after its two oxygen processing plants broke down about two months ago.
The plants have not been repaired despite promises from government.
The hospital director, Dr Filbert Nyeko, said on Monday that they are currently spending about Shs5m to purchase and transport oxygen from Kampala to serve the patients who require it at the health facility.
“We are spending about Shs5m per month to purchase and transport more than 300 cylinders of oxygen from Kampala. This is a heavy expense on the hospital compared to the situation when these two oxygen processing plants are repaired,” Dr Nyeko said.
Dr Nyeko said the use of oxygen at the facility has increased not because of the Covid-19 cases that re-emerged at the beginning of the year but the increased number of patients who require specialised treatment.
“The absence of oxygen at our facility means a lot to the patients and the health workers who attend to them. If the government could operationalise the oxygen processing plant that was constructed by the UPDF engineering brigade at the hospital last year as it repairs the other two that broke down, this would save the hospital from the heavy expenses incurred, besides offering timely health services to the patients,” Dr Nyeko added.
The Kabale District health educator, Mr Alfred Besigensi, said the breakdown of the oxygen processing plants at Kabale hospital has affected all lower health units in Kigezi Sub-region since they have been getting supplies from there.
“As the health department of Kabale District, we have been relying on oxygen supplied by Kabale Regional Referral Hospital for our health centre IVs and other hospitals. It’s our prayer that this problem is fixed to avoid a possible health crisis in the sub-region,” Mr Besigensi said.
According to records at Kabale hospital, the old oxygen processing plant constructed by the Ministry of Health at the facility was producing enough oxygen to fill about 35 big oxygen cylinders per day, while the one donated by the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef) has been producing about 72 cylinders of the same size per day.
Last week, Dr Marion Namutebi, a senior physician at Kabale hospital, said five Covid-19 patients who were admitted in the Intensive Care Unit of their facility needed oxygen.
