Gordon clinic needs more staff: Dr Yamo

THE National Department of Health (NDoH) has been called on to look into the plight of staff at the Gordon clinic in NCD.
The clinic is run by the St John health services and it provides the best and quality services.
As such, the number of patients going in to seek treatment has increased dramatically, thus out- numbering the staff.
This has led to the clinic running out of vital drugs in a short period of time and exhausting the limited number of staffs who have had to work overtime.
The clinic has only one medical officer (doctor), one health extension officer (HEO), eight nursing officers and 10 community health workers, which was not enough to cater for 400 to 500 patients seen on a daily basis.
“The health department doesn’t see the problem we have here.
“They are looking at us as a small clinic and they think that every thing is okay,” a frustrated Dr David Yamo, medical officer at the clinic told The National.
“I’ve been here for five months and I’ve seen the number of patients increase.
“We need more manpower because we have people coming in from all over the city and not just our catchment area,” he added.
He said it was very difficult to get funds from the department to buy drugs because there were protocols in place that they had to follow.
He said what they usually did was give prescriptions to patients to get the drugs at the Gerehu Hospital or buy at the pharmacies.
The department’s medical drug store only gives a month’s supply to the clinics but Dr Yamo said the drugs ran out within two weeks.
He said even patients from the private clinics and hospitals, including patients referred from other clinics, were going there to see the doctor because it costs only K10.