Patients’ influx puts pressure on under-resourced Herat hospital

HERAT CITY (Pajhwok): The influx of patients in the provincial hospital of western Herat province has put a huge pressure on services’ providers and budget section, officials said on Wednesday.

The provincial hospital of Herat city has a limited number of staff, beds for patients, a lab and other resources. The hospital is considered the only large health centre in the western zone of the country, the officials said.

Talking to Pajhwok Afghan News, the director of the hospital Dr. Mohammad Arif Jalali said they faced many challenges such as shortages of human resources to meet the needs of the increasing number of patients. He said the hospital needed more staff and resources.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has suspended financial support to the hospital and the administration of the hospital has run out of budget to support its personnel, ambulances, gas, oxygen supplies, laboratory, patient food and personnel, he said.

Referring to different organizations and the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) that supported the hospital in the past, Jalali said the hospital now lacked esources.

He asked humanitarian organizations and MoPH to provide the hospital with necessary resources as they did in the past.

The hospital is visited by around 1,800 to 2,000 patients on a daily basis and has only 650 beds.

Assistant neurologist Dr. Barakatullah Mohammadi said the hospital conducted 500 different brain surgeries last year for differently aged patients.

The operations included brain tumors, waist disk, brain bleeding and other brain problems.

A number of patients’ caregivers also confirmed that the doctors and other personnel of the hospital needed more equipment and resources to conduct surgeries.

Haji Nik Mohammad, a resident of western Badghis province, said that one of his relatives was sick since last six months and his illness was diagnosed after visiting the hospital several times.

His patient had a tumor in his head and was under treatment since ten days.

He confirmed that the hospital had good doctors and they behaved well with patients.

He said” if my patient’s condition improves, I would not seek any more treatment in other hospitals, but this hospital really needs more resources.”

Habibullah brought his son to the hospital two months ago for the treatment of his head injury he sustained in Iran.

He was satisfied with the services provided by the doctors and said: “We must not leave the country for treatment of our patients because our doctors are capable of treatment what they need is support.”

Experts, however, expressed concern about the lack of budget for the hospital.

Dr. Nisar Ahmad Musaddiq, the head of the doctors union, said better health services needed financial support, if not provided, many more challenges would arise.

Pajhwok tried to seek response from the provincial Health Department officials about its queries, but received no response until the publication of the report.

According to information provided by officials of the Herat hospital, over 171,000 patients visited the hospital during the first three months of the current year and about 10,000 different surgeries were performed during the same period.

aw/ma

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