ARUA I URN: Arua Regional Referral Hospital is grappling with a huge staffing gap, with several critical positions remaining vacant, as well as inadequate infrastructure to accommodate staff and patients.
Records obtained from the hospital administration show that the facility, which is supposed to have a total of 1,195 staff, is currently operating with only 276 employees, translating to just 24% staffing capacity, which is far below what is required to effectively manage the hospital.
Established in 1932 and later elevated to a regional referral hospital status in 1996, the facility serves West Nile districts, and because of its border location, it also attracts patients from South Sudan and the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
However, the inadequate staffing continues to cripple services across different departments, as the overwhelming number of people seeking healthcare cannot be adequately attended to by the available staff.
Ben Andama, Senior Hospital Administrator at the hospital, told Uganda Radio Network (URN) that the hospital lacks consultants and other specialists, forcing management to regularly invite specialists from other facilities to handle complicated cases.
Andama acknowledged that many patients who cannot be treated at the hospital due to the absence of specialized doctors and consultants are always referred to Mulago National Referral Hospital, thought a process comes at a high cost to patients.
These challenges are mainly felt by ordinary people who rush to the hospital, hoping to receive affordable treatment, knowing it is a government facility where little or no charges are incurred compared to private health centers.
But many patients who come with such hopes are often disappointed because they cannot receive the expected treatment due to understaffing, leaving them to rely mostly on pain relievers and basic care provided by the available staff.
Hellen Adakuru, a resident of Opia Parish in Vurra Sub-county, Arua District, is among the many people stranded at the hospital and affected by inadequate staffing. She was admitted as a caretaker on Sunday last week for a patient suffering from intestinal complications.
Adakuru said the patient, who had already been scheduled for surgery, missed the opportunity because the surgeon assigned had to attend to two mothers in the maternity ward who required emergency caesarean sections due to childbirth complications.
“We brought him here on Sunday and were informed that he would undergo surgery, but up to now it has not been done. When the time for the surgery came, the surgeon was unable to conduct it because there was another emergency involving mothers in the maternity ward who required Caesarean operations,” she narrated.
A similar experience was shared by another patient who sought treatment at the hospital but preferred to remain anonymous. She noted that the few available health workers are doing their best to help patients, but they always become exhausted because the workload is overwhelming.
One of the most understaffed yet critical departments at the hospital is the maternity ward, where an average of 700 mothers deliver every month, with between 20 and 30 deliveries recorded every 24 hours, both normal and Caesarean.
The department has only eight staff members, who work in three shifts of day, evening, and night to ensure they get some rest before returning to duty amid the increasing number of mothers seeking services. Grace Adiru, the Senior Nursing Officer and in charge of the Labour Suite in the maternity ward, acknowledged the struggle to provide quality maternal care amid the staffing challenges.
Adiru revealed that the department, which is headed by a senior consultant, has only three gynecologists covering all sections, including postnatal care and Maternal and Child Health (MCH), in an effort to bridge the staffing gap.
The understaffing in the department is far below the recommended standard of one midwife attending to one mother. Instead, one midwife is often forced to attend to more than 10 mothers concurrently, affecting the quality of care that is given during childbirth.
The hospital is also struggling with inadequate space in the maternity ward. The current facility has a bed capacity of only about 28, forcing mothers who have normal deliveries to be discharged early in the morning.
Meanwhile, caretakers in almost all wards are left sleeping outside on verandas or in corridors due to limited accommodation space. A few of the available staff at the hospital are accommodated at the facility in the quarters, but not adequate for all of them
