Referral hospital a glorified clinic - MP
LOBAMBA – The Lubombo Referral Hospital has been labelled a ‘glorified clinic’ by Gilgal MP Sandla Fakudze.
Lack of advanced machinery like dialysis and others does not qualify the hospital as a referral, according to the legislator. Fakudze said one of the bucopho in his constituency was on a dialysis and he had to attend at least three times a week but because the referral hospital did not have the equipment, he had to travel to another hospital where he eventually succumbed to the ailment.
He said people on dialysis were the most affected and they were complaining about the lack of the equipment in a hospital whose status entailed having the machine. “Some people travel from faraway places all the way to Mbabane because they have been referred there, yet we claim to have a referral hospital. This is not a referral hospital but a glorified clinic,” he said.
Fakudze urged the minister to invest in the dialysis machine at the hospital because a lot of people were affected by it not being available. Ndzingeni MP Lutfo Dlamini also shared that he lost his brother a few days ago, owing to the issue of the dialysis and what boggled the legislator’s mind was that the ministry had the funding to invest in the dialysis machinery but it was not, with the excuse that the funding was reserved for emergencies.
Funding
“How many more emaSwati should die because of this while the ministry reserves funding for other emergencies?” he questioned. The Minister of Health, Lizzie Nkosi, in her response, admitted that the hospital was not yet a referral but it had a lot of potential to be one. She said government had invested so much into the hospital, including setting up a laboratory that would avoid, among other things, having people being referred to other hospitals. She mentioned that at some point, they did have a dialysis machine at the hospital but there was a lot they had to do, owing to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic that disrupted progress.