Optimise Princess Marina�s resources, Madigele urges
Mpho Mokwape | Tuesday January 27, 2015 16:49
Officially opening the Princess Marina Hospital Stakeholders’ Pitso on Friday, Madigele said the scarcity of resources warrants that there be an explicit framework that can guide both policy makers, service providers and the nation to optimise output and care. “The Pitso is held under the theme ‘Working Together Towards An Effective and Efficient Health Service’ and this is the perfect time to consider the fact that it is important to optimise the little resources that we have to provide quality heathcare to those in need without any compromising,” he said.
Madigele said developing an effective and efficient health service was essential for overcoming bottlenecks in order to achieve national and global health goals.
“There is ample evidence that effective consultation and partnerships are associated with the comprehensiveness and quality of service provided,” he said.
He added that the process of consultation and fostering partnerships was the Ministry’s effort to live up to the expectations of consumers of health services.
Madigele said that this gives the Ministry a platform to draw a new beginning on how to team together to create desirable and sustainable results. The assistant minister further explained that government had initiated a number of strategies such as development of Hubs, which are designed to promote diversification and employment creation, efficiency in health service delivery and most importantly medical tourism.
“Some of our successes so far include the introduction of five basic specialties of Anesthesia, Pediatrics, Surgery, Internal Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynecology in all district hospitals, either on resident or outreach basis. Furthermore Cardiology is offered at Sekgoma and Deborah Retief Memorial with outreach service to other places while Cardiac Surgery, Nephrology, together with knee and hip replacement at Marina,” he said.
However, Madigele noted that there were still a number of challenges.
“Such challenges included the inadequate health workforce, maintenance of health facilities and medical equipment, availability of drugs and distribution, the scourge and threat of HIV/AIDS and shortage of specialised care,” he said.
In response, the hospital superintendent, Dr Kealeboga Motumise said Marina is undergoing an accreditation process in order to meet the target for service delivery.
Also, said Motumise, there were a number of ongoing initiatives such as customer care, devolution of services, drug availability stock-outs, facility maintenance management, outsourcing of non-core services and autologous blood transfusion service.
“Our autologous blood transfusion service, is whereby patients donate their own blood for future use,” he said.
He said despite all these and the need to optimise resources for better services delivery, there were still challenges such as overcrowding, shortage of space, drug availability at all times and staff welfare issues.