Hospital may close

By ELIAS LARI
THE Kudjip Nazarene Hospital in Jiwaka is to close in November because funding is not available from the Government, the hospital says.
Chief executive officer Greg Maurer confirmed this yesterday, saying there was no Government funding since last August and that had placed a severe strain on financial resources of the Nazarene Health Ministries and the hospital.
He said if funding was not received by today, it would mark a year of the hospital running without funds from the Government.
The hospital must make operational adjustments to prevent depletion of all financial resources, Maurer said.
“Local and national leaders have previously been made aware of our impending financial crisis and efforts to secure emergency funding are on-going,” he said.
“A contingency plan has been developed and will be implemented on Monday if emergency funding is not received or committed.”
Maurer said this was forcing closure of all outpatient service, with only the emergency department to remain open.
Only emergency surgeries will be available and maternity services will only be offered by referral while the four hospital inpatient wards will be reduced to two wards, thereby limiting the inpatient capacity by half.
He said by next month, the inpatient services would also be scaled down and staff would work half the current time.
“No staff lay-offs are planned during this scale-down period,” Maurer said.
“These actions are certainly not desired and we recognise the significant hardship this will create for our patients and staff.”
He said on April 11, 2017, the hospital executed a partnership agreement through a memorandum of agreement with the provincial and the national governments to serve as the interim provincial public hospital.
Maurer said funding for Kudjip had been problematic, with some years of funding surplus and some years of deficit.
The hospital normally expends an average of K1 million a month to maintain full operation and, since June, it had a revenue deficit of K3,305,172 with a projected year-end deficit of K7,235,488, he said.
Since January, it received only incidental funding of K320,000 from the Jiwaka health authority.
This year’s budget is K15 million.
Chief executive officer of the Jiwaka health authority Titus Turi said a meeting would be held today and he will release a full statement about the issue.