By Septimus Senessie in Kono
The District Medical Officer, Kono and the Coordinator of a civil society organisation in the district have both told Politico that the contractor undertaking rehabilitation work on the district hospital has abandoned the work “with serious consequences” for the effective functioning of facilities in the hospital.
DMO Francis Jayah described the current condition of the hospital as “counter-productive to the effective and efficient running of the hospital,” adding that most of the electrical installations and water pipes in the hospital were disconnected at the start of rehabilitation work.
He blamed the inadequate toilet facilities at the hospital to the stalled rehabilitation work because VIP latrines that were part of the project had still not been constructed.
For his part, Philip Lansana of Health for All Coalition said the contractor abandoned the work site in January this year, leaving all facilities in the hospital includingthe toilet, electricity cables and water pipes destroyed.
He claimed that because of the incomplete work on the Under-Fives hall and limited accommodation space for the ever-growing numbers of infants, nurses had been left with no choice but “to choke up the children in twos and threes from different mothers and with different diseases on the same bed”.
Lansana described the situation as “unacceptable”, insisting that children are exposed to communicable before they are discharge from hospital after treatment for the disease that brought them in the first place.
An MCH-AID attached to the antenatal clinic, Mariama Fofana, told Politico that they were finding it difficult to work effectively in their temporary facility provided them. She said prior to the rehabilitation work on the hospital, they operated from a disused morgue which she said did not accommodate the growing numbers of suckling mothers, under-five children and pregnant women.
The manager of the construction company, Breakthrough Design and Construction Neddy Dixon, denied that he had abandoned the job. He said his workers were on the ground doing some parts of the building.
Speaking on the telephone from Freetown, he admitted that work was moving at “a snail’s pace” and blamed the government for delaying the payment of the second tranche of the contract fee for the completion of the work.
(C) Politico 09/07/13
