Bakel, Jan 6 (APS) – The head doctor of the health district of Bakel (east), Goumba Lô, pleaded, Monday, for the strengthening of nursing staff at the health center which covers five municipalities in the department of the region of Tambacounda (East).
“In Bakel, we have a type 2 health center, that is to say we have a functional operating theater. So, we must have a team at the block level and a maternity team but the staff is insufficient,” underlined Doctor Lo during an interview with the APS.
According to him, resources (nurses, midwives) are lacking in Bakel.
He called for positive discrimination for the district, which apart from the five communes it covers, also receives patients from Kidira, Kanel (Matam), Mali and Mauritania.
“Hence the interest in really strengthening the staff to hope to have quality care (…) in addition to the gynecologist, we must have an EmOC (emergency obstetric care) doctor. The problem we have, if the gynecologist is absent, the service is stopped in the operating room,” he lamented.
He welcomed the remarkable work carried out by the gynecologist, stressing that they are still awaiting the promise from the authorities relating to the assignment of a doctor so that he can take over in the absence of the gynecologist.
According to the doctor, the strengthening of staff must also concern the department’s other service delivery points (PPS).
“We have 24 service points and there are only 12 which are double positions, that is to say positions where you have a nurse and a midwife. There are certain health posts where there is only a nurse. If the latter is absent the service will not be running,” he explained.
Dr. Lo also noted that evacuations are carried out over long distances, such as Ourossogui located 150km from the town of Bakel or that of Tambacounda located 250km away.
“It requires a lot of fuel. Sometimes districts participate in providing this fuel. We spend at least one million five hundred, sometimes two million CFA francs on fuel every month,” he said.
“We proposed to the authority to set up a fuel bank in which each municipality will participate by making fuel available at the service station,” he recalled.
AND/ABD/SKS/ASB/AKS
