Patients at Karugutu Health Center IV have requested the government to construct more building facilities so that there can be some measure of dignity for patients at the health unit.
Karugutu HC IV which currently serves over 27,000 patients every month is the second health Center IV in Ntoroko district. Being along the highway, the facility receives patients from Bundibugyo Ntoroko and DRC.
However, the facility is having a number of challenges ranging from shortage of essential drugs, inadequate staff, limited space for expansion and few structures for accommodating in-patients.
Patients and attendants at Karugutu health Center IV said the facility lacks privacy whereby both men, women and children are being treated from the same general ward irrespective of their various illnesses, a situation they say is unacceptable and the government should immediately act on the problem.
Nyabalenzi Joyce one of the patients at Kargutu health Center IV told urn that it is unbecoming to have men in the same ward with females since other patients due to illness-related conditions, can’t control themselves hence end up striping naked in front of their opposite sex.
Yusuf Kule Katwikirize, a patient, attendant told our reporter that Karugutu health Center is the biggest facility in the district and due to its proximity the government should grant it a status of a district general hospital.
Katwikiirize says he was shocked when his patient was ordered to share the same ward with men yet she’s is a woman, he says the facility also treats all patients in the same ward irrespective of their diagnosis.
Mate sawani the secretary social services at Karugutu town council says they have reported the matter to the district authorities’ severally but nothing has been done to save the situation.
Dr. Fredrick Kahuma the Karugutu health Center IV in charge says the district and the government are all aware of the situation at the facility, however, he is trying to convince Non-government organization development partnern to lend a hand and help in establishing building structures that will in the end save the situation.
William Kasoro the district chairman admits that there is a challenge at the facility especially the lack of privacy where men women and children are being treated from the same ward.
He says the district has no funds to establish new structures at the moment and the government has been notified severally, but without giving any positive response.
“Most of the structures established at the facility have since been contributed by donor in spite the facility having been in place for over 50 years, we want to see the government contribution as well, the medics here are going through tough times to convince patients to share the same wards, they can’t turn them away,” Kasoro sated.
Kasoro says the hospital also lacks a mortuary to keep the dead bodies, he says today the patients and corpses have to share the same space until claimants retrieve the bodies.
–URN
