Jinja hospital to expand intensive care unit

Jinja, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The Intensive Care Unit at Jinja Regional Referral Hospital will be expanded to create more space for the increasing number of critically ill patients.

A total of 32 COVID-19 patients were admitted to the hospital’s ICU between May 2020 and April 2021. Of these, 26 died while only six were successfully discharged from the facility, while three other lives have been lost since the outbreak of the second wave last month.

Since June 3, 2021, an average of three critically ill COVID-19 patients is referred to the Jinja Hospital ICU from Mulago and Mbale hospitals on a daily basis. But only three out of the 12-beds in the unit are fully functional.

Sharifa Mudondo, an attendant to one of the patients says that they were forced to share a treatment room with another COVID-19 patient over shortage of space. She said that the second bed was fitted into the room four days after their admission, which according to her was risky for the recovering patient.

Jinja Hospital director Florence Tugumisirize told URN in an interview this morning that several referral hospitals have often requested them to accommodate more patients in their ICU. However, she adds that the surplus ICU beds are in an enclosed ward that does not have separate doors for patients which might expose health workers to COVID-19 and other infections.

Tugumisirize stresses that they will fix the missing hardware on the ICU beds, create an alternative exit door for the patients before operationalizing all the surplus beds in the ICU.

She adds that engineers have already embarked on the expansion works and by the end of this week, more ICU beds shall be operationalized to accommodate referrals from other hospitals within the country.

*****

URN