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MBABANE – RFM Hospital Matron Sandile Malaza says the Labour Ward is short- staffed despite being categorised as an emergency ward.
Worth noting is that there has been a public outcry from some patients, who claimed that they were not receiving the expected help from midwifes.
Mala]a said they always rushed to assist pregnant women who were at the point of delivery since that was an emergency, to avoid complica tions that may arise and result in loss of life.
Process
“Since the Maternity /abour Ward is categorised under emergency, then it means the staff must be enough as well to executive the job effectively. Tincane letisebenti. It can be a good thing that each and every pregnant woman must have her own midwife, specifically assigned to her in the entire delivery process,” he said.
He further said the /abour Ward was more or less an intensive care unit (ICU), which needed enough staff. Also, there are few beds at the 5FM Maternity Ward as compared to the number of preg nant women giving birth daily. Mala]a said there ward had only
beds (three reserved for high care labour complications, two for pre term, four for pregnant sick mothers, two for mothers with communicable diseases, for delivery and another one was private but now defunct and used for delivery.
He said the /abour Ward was the busiest in the institution since the occupancy rate was high as it carried about pregnant women.
“According to our statistics, we have deliveries daily. The mid wifes though end up giving health care services to many other women who are in labour. This average is according our up to date statistics, which is one woman per hour,” he said.
Challenge
Meanwhile, he said the issue of not having enough beds for women to deliver was a challenge that com promised their global and national standard of how they should operate as midwifes.
“We must not discharge any wom an upon arrival to hospital while waiting to deliver. The challenge is that once we tell them to go and walk within the hospital premises while preparing for easily delivery, no one monitors them during that period, exposing them to danger of giving birth along the corridors,” he said.
To try and deal with the issue of negligence within the facility in fu ture, Mala]a said they would stop pregnant women from walking up and down the corridors while wait ing to be attended to by midwifes.
“To expand the maternity ward would be a commendable thing to accommodate the pregnant women to stop them from moving within the corridors. Also, there must be provision of beds for all those who are in labour because currently, we do not have such beds,” he added.