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Mulago in hurried purchase as sick live on expired equipment
Equipment in the Intensive Care Unit of Mulago Hospital is expired, putting the lives of patients at risk. Photo by S. Otage
Kampala
Following the expiry of the intensive care equipment at the national referral, Mulago Hospital is set to acquire four new life support machines through an emergency procurement. According to the hospital executive director, Dr Byarugaba Baterana, the life support machines are supposed to work for 1,000 hours but the current ventilators (life support machines) were acquired more than 12 years ago as a donation from the government of Japan.
The machines have since outlived their usefulness and can put lives of patients in danger if used because they lack filters- an important component of a life-support machine that breathes for a patient and determines the level of oxygen a patient needs to survive under intensive care.
Worse still, the filters are no longer on the market so the only way out is revamping the entire system. “We, however, borrow filters from the heart institute and other departments, when not in use, to support the patients as we wait to procure new equipment by end of next month,” Dr Byarugaba said. However, a visit to the Intensive Care Unit at the heart institute revealed that the machines were also lacking medial gas to run them rendering them out of service for now.
A nurse who preferred anonymity said: “The four functional units at the general intensive care unit also keep failing thus putting patients’ lives in more danger. The doctors keep struggling to fix the machines.”
A new life support machine costs between $30,000 and $50,000 (Shs73m-Shs122m) depending on the capacity and number of hours it can work. This means that the hospital needs more than Shs400m to purchase at least four new machines.
Dr Byarugaba, however, says the hospital is over whelmed by the number of patients, adding that the national referral can no longer accommodate them. According to a source, Mulago Hospital receives between four to 10 people in dire need of life support every day. Most of them are turned away because of lack of equipment.
Ideally, with a 1,500 official bed capacity, 150 of the beds should be high dependency-where critical cases are handled and 50 of them purely for ICU but Mulago Hospital is not anywhere closer to that figure.
Given the high costs charged by private hospitals, several patients throng the hospital for cheaper services which now also seem just a distant dream. Other departments that have ICU beds in the hospital are the pediatric ward (4), the heart institute (4) and the cancer institute (3).
Other public hospitals that have functioning ICUs in the country are Mbarara Hospital with at least four beds and Lacor Hospital in Gulu with four beds. Jinja Hospital has an established intensive care unit but lacks an anesthesiologist to run it.
