Monitor story earns Pakwach  health facility major facelift

The management of Pakwach Health Centre IV is waiting for the UPDF Engineering team to kick off the construction project to expand the facility’s maternity unit.

The health centre sits about 300 meters away from the Nile River banks on the Karuma-Arua highway in Pakwach Town Council.

At the weekend, Dr Paul Ajal, the district health officer, told the Monitor in an interview that the Health ministry’s decision to give the facility Shs500 million to upgrade its maternity unit resulted from a story published in this publication late last year.

 “That story detailed the plight of the mothers who come here to seek maternity and child health care services, prompting the ministry to dispatch a delegation here to assess the problem and that is how they decided to take that action,” Dr Ajal said.

“The officials were surprised, they could not believe what was there once we took them through the journey on how the maternity ward was 5km away from the health centre, the dilapidation and ill-equipped theatre and inadequate staff,” he explained.

Dr Ajal observed that during the visit, the ministry committed to lobby for a theatre to be constructed as soon as possible.

The Shs500 million funding has come in handy as the district plans to have a theatre built in the expanded maternity, a laboratory and additional patient space to cater for more mothers, the authorities said. The contract has been awarded to the UPDF Engineering department and all the documentation was signed, Dr Ajal added.

Dr John Bosco Oryema, the officer-in-charge of Pakwach Health Centre IV, said the development will enable them to decongest the current maternity unit and offer quality service to the population.

“We want to increase the labour unit, creating more rooms for postnatal, creating another room for neonatal and then more rooms for expectant mothers and also theatre,” Dr Oryema explained. He adds that in the meantime they have continued to ferry mothers booked for caesarean operations from the new maternity ward to the theatre for operations and then back on the road.

 “Mothers are being ferried from the other maternity ward to the theatre on the murram road through that distance when the patient has not yet recovered from anaesthesia because we have no other option,” he said.
According to Dr Oryema, the funds were given for the expansion of the maternity unit and Out Patent Department.

“The expansion works will be done at the provisional maternity ward; that is where the district has acquired land. It is where the whole facility is supposed to be moved. The old place where the facility is located was long condemned by Nema due to its proximity to the Nile,” Mr Joel Steem Omito, the chairperson of Pakwach District, said.

Last year in July, this publication published a story, detailing that a dilapidated maternity unit of the health centre was collapsing and that a provincial maternity ward, built 5km away from the facility, had turned into a death trap for mothers booked for deliveries due to the bad roads, connecting the two facilities.

It also revealed that the district’s plea to the health ministry to fast-track the upgrade of the facility into a district hospital to boost their capacity to handle the large number of mothers who come for maternal health services was being ignored.

The health centre serves a huge population that stretches from the DR Congo border to districts such as Nwoya, Buliisa, Madi-Okollo, and Nebbi.

Besides the high number of deliveries conducted at the new unit, the facility conducts other services such as EPI (Expanded Programme on Immunisation) and MCH (Maternal and Child Health) care services. All this is done in difficult circumstances, including under tents.

In 2019, the provisional maternity ward—built by the Health ministry—started operating. Dr Oryema told the Monitor that they could not build a new maternity block inside the facility following the Nema directive.
Whereas the Ministry of Health standards prescribe that a health centre IV should have 25 beds for admissions, this facility gambles with at least 72 beds for admissions.

Last year, the office of the chief administrative officer wrote to the Health ministry, demanding an upgrade of the unit.
The health unit serves as the district’s referral facility. It serves a population of 194,757 people and the neighbouring districts.