The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Mbarara, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Lack of staff at the cancer unit of Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital is over-stretching the care services.
The unit has only one qualified pediatrician and senior oncologist, with six nurses that assist the doctor.
The ward also gets one other doctor who comes as a volunteer. The 16-bed unit opened in 2017 receives patients from all districts found in the south western and north western regions.
Cancer types mostly treated at the ward include Leukemia also known as blood cancer, Kidney cancer and Lymphoma cancer.
Dr Barnabas Atwine, the senior oncologist and head of the cancer unit says they diagnose and treat both children and adults on an outpatient and in-patient basis with all types of cancer.
Dr Atwine says the number of cancer patients registered monthly is high compared to the health workers attending to them in the unit.
He says they asses around 200 children patients every year and 150 adult patients who are diagnosed with cancer noting that they register between 10 to 15 newly diagnosed cancer patients per month.
He says because it is the only unit in the entire region, the numbers are huge to be taken care of by one doctor and a volunteer doctor, six nurses and two pharmacists which is a big challenge for them.
He says the other challenge is the delay in the return of results for new patients noting that the results take 2 to three weeks because the tests are done manually which sometimes aggravates the growth of cancer in a patient.
Dr Celestine Barigye, the Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital Director admits that the cancer unit has too many patients to be handled by the number of staff deployed there.
He says that all the specialized departments at the hospital are short of staff and need to be facilitated with enough staff, reason why they call for the upgrade of the hospital to a national referral status.
Halson Kagure, the Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital head of communication says the ministry of health is currently working on the staff structures across all health facilities despite their call for the elevation of the hospital to a national level with hopes that this will solve the challenge of staff shortage.
Kagure says they are organizing a cancer run in August targeting to raise over 30million Shillings to help install cancer lab equipment.
Dr Atwine says they need at least 32 million Shillings to install an automated immuno machine, monitors and a complete blood count machine to quicken the testing of patients for cancer in their blood.
*****
URN
