Pneumonia cases up in Ghor; hospital faces bed shortage

FEROZKOH (Pajhwok): Hospital sources in western Ghor province have acknowledged surge in the number of children suffering from pneumonia in, while families of infected children complained against the shortage of bed in the Provincial Hospital.

Officials said the hospital capacity was 200 beds in which 80 beds were allocated for children.

Sakina, 48,  who brought her grandchild from the Shahrak Muhajarin village of Ferozkoh to the Provincial Hospital, told Pajhwok Afghan News her grandchild hospitalized from the past 6 days and nights due to pneumonia infection.

She said bed shortage in the hospital was a serious issue and her grandchild was provided treatment on a shared bed with three more infected children.

Sakina said: “I brought  my this grandchild six days and nights ago to the hospital, he is sick and doctor said that he is infected with pneumonia, you can see yourself there is not bed for patients and each bed is allocated to up to six patients, there is no place to sit, what should we do?”

While complaining due to economic issues, she said, her family managed to get medicines for the ill grandchildren bearing a lot of hardship and difficulties.

She added: “The hospital did not provide us free medicine and we do not have money to buy it, my son daily work and purchase medicine with the money he earned so that my grandchildren recover. The price of medicine is high and one cannot find original medicine as well.”

Suraya, from Dawlena district is the mother of another child, who is infected from pneumonia and is hospitalized in the Provincial Hospital.

Suraya said: “I came from Dawlena district, there no bed for the patients, few patients lay on one bed.”

Some other individuals who brought patients to the hospital shared similar complaints.

Officials and doctors of the hospital acknowledged the beds shortage issue for the patients suffering from pneumonia.

One of the doctors, Baba Jan Najib told Pajhwok: “Unfortunately the weather is very cold in Ghor province during this winter and we see a hike in pneumonia cases compared to the previous years. Cold weather is the main reason of respiratory diseases, there are too many patients in children’s ward, we currently host over 180 children in this ward.”

The lack of space is another challenge in this hospital, so we place more than one child in each bed of the hospital, he said.

Hospital Director Dr. Abdul Ahmad Noori said the figure showed that the cases of pneumonia were still on the rise among children while the hospital is facing the shortage of beds.

He said: “Unfortunately the pneumonia cases are on the rise due to the cold wave of winter but luckily the fatality rate is lower comparing to the fatality figure of last year. During the past year 52 children died from respiratory diseases while we had only 41 fatalities during the past ten months”.

According to the figure of the hospital, since the beginning the current year, over 4,000 children were admitted to the hospital for treatment which show a significant decrease in compare to the past year.

He accepted that the shortage of beds was a challenge for them but the personnel of the hospital attempted to reach to all of the patients.

The beds shortage problem had been conveyed to the officials in the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) and urged to provide more beds to the children ward, he added.

Aw/nh