Mendi hospital scales down

National

PEOPLE in Southern Highlands have been told to make use of health services available in their electorates as Mendi Provincial Hospital has scaled down its operation.
Southern Highlands provincial health authority chief executive officer Dr Joseph Birisi told The National that the hospital would no longer attend to outpatient cases due to a drug shortage.
He said it was now giving priority only to emergency cases and others have been referred to their nearest health centres and aid posts in the districts.
“The shortage of drugs is a nationwide problem, it is not us alone,” Birisi said.
He said the hospital always ran out of basic drugs and that had been an issue since last year.
“The hospital spent about K80,000 last year and K200,000 this year on drugs and consumables alone, using the hospital funds which were not budgeted for that purpose,” Birisi said.
“It is the Department of Health’s duty to supply medicines.
“What the hospital saw was that it could not go on like this and the best decision made was to scale down operations at the hospital.
“We scaled down services because we wanted to look at emergency cases only due to the drug shortage.”
He said outpatients must return to their district health centres and aid posts, and use whatever resources that were available there.
“Some people have posted false information on Facebook stating that Mendi Provincial Hospital has been closed due to drug shortage,” Birisi said.
“This is misinformation, we have not shut down the hospital’s operations but trimmed them to make sure whatever drugs that are available will be used in emergency cases until such time when we receive supplies.”