Letsholathebe II Memorial Hospital is showing positive trend towards the accreditation process, says the hospital superintendent, Dr Maxwell Mungisi.
Briefing North West District Council about health issues recently, Dr Mungisi said the hospital was among the selected health facilities that were undergoing accreditation on health cycles.
He was optimistic that the hospital would pass the accreditation process as there had been a lot of improvement in all the 31 service areas, which were undergoing assessment. All the service areas had to reach a target of 80 per cent to pass accreditation.
Dr Mungisi said the accreditation process of the facility started in 2010 and the objective of the exercise was to provide quality health care services, comparable to other facilities of the same status both locally and internationally.
He said upon attaining the accreditation status the facility would be issued with a certificate of accreditation by the accrediting body which is the Council for Health Services Accreditation for Southern Africa (COHSASA).
Dr Mungisi said the hospital’s baseline score was at 34 per cent during the last quarter assessment and currently the facility score was at 51 per cent. He said to keep on improving the baseline score, regular meetings were held to come up with strategies and also work on the feedback from service elements.
In addition, he said management briefings are also held to keep management updated on quality issues.
On other issues, Dr Mungisi appealed to councillors to sensitize the communities about the importance of indoor residual spraying of malaria.
He said the Indoor Residual Spray (IRS) that fights the Anopheles female mosquito, which causes Malaria continued to face numerous challenges in Ngamiland especially in Maun as the communities still resist spraying.
He said the challenges negatively affect the efforts by the Ngami District Health Management Team (DHMT)) in controlling malaria and urged the councillors to talk to their electorates to cooperate and open doors for the spraying teams.
He said they conducted a campaign between October 2014 and January 2015 and the lowest villages sprayed were Koromo and Lekawa with 30 per cent coverage while the highest was Makakung with 88 per cent coverage.
Dr Mungisi told the meeting that malaria was a serious concern in the district noting that currently 12 cases had been recorded in Sehithwa, Toteng and Bothatogo villages. He said Botswana was one of the countries that endeavoured to eliminate malaria and as such any case detected was considered an outbreak hence the need to join hands and achieve zero cases in future.
For their part, councillors complained about shortage of drugs in health facilities, especially with patients of high blood pressure and sugar diabetes.
They also complained about shortage of specialists, blankets, power cuts and the status of hygiene at Letsholathebe hospital.In response, Dr Mungisi explained that the status of hygiene at Letsholathebe hospital had improved significantly since the ministry of Health took a decision to outsource cleaning and laundry services.
He also said power failures had never disturbed their operation as they have two back-up generators.
Regarding the issue of specialists, he observed that the ministry had improved the situation by engaging private companies to provide specialists in some of the health facilities.
Source : BOPA
Source : Botswana Daily News