Jinja hospital loses 48 mothers annually due to blood shortage

The director of Jinja Regional Referral Hospital, Dr Yayi Alfred, said the facility loses a mother from the maternity ward on a weekly basis due to shortage of blood.

“We lose at least a mother every week. These are four mothers every month. They mostly die because of inadequate blood supply,’’ he told Daily Monitor in an interview on Monday.

Dr Yayi said Busoga Sub-region lacks a blood bank, which makes it hard to save the life of mothers who are urgently in need of blood.

“When there is a complication, especially after a rapture and there is [too much bleeding], they [patients] require to be urgently transfused with blood, but because we don’t have a regional blood bank, we have to rush to Nakasero to pick blood and sometimes it takes time to save a life,’’ he said.

Dr Yayi said they are putting pressure on government to establish a blood bank in Busoga region.

“We are making a lot of efforts to ensure Busoga region gets a regional blood bank as soon as possible to address the challenge of blood shortage,’’ he said.

According to data from the hospital, of the 530 babies delivered monthly at the facility, 170 are through caesarean section.

Dr Yayi also revealed that some deaths occur because of late referrals from the lower facilities.

“We receive a lot of referrals from the lower levels and these referrals are mostly complicated cases. Mothers who may not deliver normally usually end up in the theatre,’’ he said.

Jinja hospital is engaging lower levels facilities to ensure that they have the required capacity to do simple operations and reduce late referrals.

“The maternal death rate is still high, we need to work together to bring them down in Jinja, we want health centre IVs and general hospitals to start handling these simple caesarean sections so that we cut down on delays and we can save quite a number of lives,’’ Dr Yayi said.

According to the 2016 Uganda Demographic Health Survey, 16 mothers in Uganda die every day. Four out of every 10 mothers are adolescents.

Interventions
Last month, Uganda Land Commission ordered Uganda Muslim Supreme Council to vacate a disputed land they have been fighting over with Jinja Regional Referral Hospital (JRRH) to pave the way for the construction of a regional blood bank.
     
The four acres of land in question stretches from Plot 31-39 in Jinja City adjacent to the hospital and Jinja Muslim cemetery.
     
Uganda has regional blood banks in Arua, Mbale, Gulu, Lira, Nakasero, Masaka, Mbarara, and Fort Portal.

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