Patients overwhelm health centre
Patients wait to receive various medical services outside Block A of Omee Health Centre II in Layima Sub county, Amuru District. Photo/ Paul Adude
What you need to know:
- The Amuru District Deputy Chief Administrative Officer, Mr John Bosco Opio said it would be much better if the health centre is upgraded in order to provide a wide range of services to the over 30,000 people in the two sub counties.
- The Senior District Health Officer, Mr Galdinus Okwonga said the overwhelming number of patients received at Omee in ratio to the health workers calls for discussion.
Health personnel at Omee Health Centre II in Layima Sub county, Amuru District are seeking for the intervention of government and private partners to upgrade the facility to a health Centre III to enable it handle the large numbers of patients it serves from two sub counties.
Mr Alfred Nokrach, the In- charge of the health centre said the facility provides services to a large population of people in the two sub counties of Layima and Lakang since Lakang lacks a government health facility.
“We can receive 1, 500 patients quarterly from Layima only. The services provided at the facility include immunisation, treatment of minor illnesses, antenatal care, family planning and we offer health education talk to patients that come to the facility,” he said.
Mr Nokrach said the facility faces an influx of patients during the planting and harvesting seasons with an increase in the population from people who move to the area for farming activities. The workers go to the health centre for treatment hence affecting the services delivered to the already outstretched facility.
“We don’t admit patients here, those with severe conditions are referred to Otwe Health Centre III. We have planned for integrated outreach where we take the services to the community providing services like family planning to the young girls to protect them from unwanted pregnancies, sex education talk, test and treat for malaria, immunisations especially HPV vaccinations for the young girls to protect them from cancer of the cervix, we also conduct school pep program” he said.
Mr Nokrach said although the facility is a Health Centre II and does not provide Antiretroviral therapy (ART) clinic services, it still receives a high demand from people seeking HIV/AIDS services thus the need for the upgrade in order to provide comprehensive services to the six villages from the three parishes within it’s catchment area.
“We only carry out HIV testing services for pregnant women but sometimes there are patients who come seeking for the services but due to lack of testing Kits, we don’t do it for them because we want to keep them for the pregnant mothers. The facility isn’t supplied with the HIV testing kits. We normally borrow from other facilities which is challenging for us,” he said.
The Senior District Health Officer, Mr Galdinus Okwonga said the overwhelming number of patients received at Omee in ratio to the health workers calls for discussion.
He noted that laboratory services are inadequate to server the population that require testing before treatment.
“It’s a very vast, long distance to somebody in need of medical attention. Sometimes they might even be pregnant. It needs to be addressed as an emergency. The quickest action point could be to look at the other staff in different health facilities that can be taken there and support them on a weekly basis. But what is more worrying is the laboratory part since you can’t carry the laboratory with you. This calls for the need to improve Otwe health centre III laboratory to a higher level that can investigate samples taken from these large numbers of patients,” he said.
The Amuru District Deputy Chief Administrative Officer, Mr John Bosco Opio said it would be much better if the health centre is upgraded in order to provide a wide range of services to the over 30,000 people in the two sub counties.
“We have people in Lakang who have to travel to Omee Health Centre II in Layima, the only government facility which is 50kms away for any health service since it’s the nearest one. With the coverage that we have, we don’t have sufficient services that we can provide in a health centre II setting, from Lakang adding onto the Layima community we have a very big gap where these reproductive, child health services can’t be fully handled” he said.
Mr Opio added, “Amuru is too big and you find that people face challenges in accessing medical services due to long distances which gives opportunity to traditional birth attendants to work yet in other areas they are limited to referrals even though people still go to them and in conditions where the mother is HIV positive, the elimination of the mother to child contraction can’t be ascertained because they have given birth in an unsafe environment‘’.
