Masaka hospital to get five ICU facilities

However, Mr  Kagirita did not give a timeframe within which the ICU facilities will be established and the budget for the project.

“According to our records, Masaka reported its first case on March 22, 2020 and has 677 Covid-19 confirmed cases and 32 deaths which are 10 per cent of the national cumulative death, a percentage which needs much attention,” Mr Kagirita said while launching home-based care (HBC) at Ssaza Hall in Masaka City at the weekend.

Dr Nathan Onyachi, the Masaka Regional Referral Hospital director, said they currently lack an ICU and are yet to decide where those promised by government will be placed.
“We thank government for considering us under this new project [of acquiring ICUs] and when they are put in place, they will be put to good use,” he said.

Mr Bernard Lubwama, a surveillance officer from the Ministry of Health, said the HBC is aimed at curbing stigma among communities and reducing congestion in hospitals.

The Health ministry introduced home-based care last October to relieve the constrained health system. 

“ It’s already clear that we have to learn how to live with Covid-19  and among other ways of managing it  is to heed to home-based care, which will be for only asymptomatic patients and when patients are managed from home, stigma towards Covid-19 patients will be reduced,” Mr Lubwama said.

He said the Ministry of Health has already dispatched rapid diagnostic tests to regional referral hospitals, health centre IIIs and IIs, adding that health officers have been trained on how to use them.

Mr Lubwama said the community should go for testing because it is now free-of-charge and one gets results within 30 minutes.
“When one is a contact or develops Covid-19 symptoms, they should go to the nearest government health facility and test.

 When one is found positive without any symptoms then he/she can be managed from home with the surveillance of village health team and health workers,’ he said. 
 
Mr Lubwama revealed that the Ministry of Health is rolling a programme to train and create taskforces in communities at sub-county and parish level to support the existing district Covid-19 taskforce committees in implementing the home-based care programme of Covid-19 patients.

Dr Hebert Kazoora from the Ministry of Health said the home-based care excludes people of old age, adding that such people should be taken to health centres for further management.

“As we advance to HBC, people should practise all standard operating procedures (SOPs) in management of Covid-19 patients at their homes for 10 days until they test negative for the virus,” he said.

Challenges
At the height of Covid-19 pandemic last year, the government had promised to install 10 ventilators, but this never materialised.

Recently, Mr George Otim, the commissioner of Health Services Infrastructure at the Health ministry, said they had established 143 ICU beds at 14 regional referral hospitals.
 
However, a recent mini-survey by Daily Monitor revealed that some hospital administrators are still keeping the beds in stories as they lack space where to set up the ICU beds .

Masaka hospital

Masaka Regional Referral Hospital was constructed in 1927, as a treatment centre for syphilis, before it was later elevated to a referral status in 1995 to offer services to the greater southern region districts. 

Since then, the hospital has been grappling with many challenges ranging from lack of space to accommodate the overwhelming numbers of patients, inadequate drugs and irregular power supply.

The facility serves 10 districts; Masaka, Kalungu, Rakai, Lyantonde, Lwengo, Sembabule, Bukomansimbi, Kyotera and Kalangala and Masaka City.  

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