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Mozambique: Health Minister Resumes Unannounced Visits
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
23 January 2008
Posted to the web 23 January 2008
Maputo
Mozambican Health Minister Ivo Garrido on Tuesday resumed his unannounced visits to health units - and confirmed, in the southern city of Matola, an atmosphere of disrespect for patients, illegal charges and disorganization.
Garrido said his visits to the Matola I and II health units were prompted by denunciations by angry patients. He sent health inspectors to investigate, and then followed that up by dropping in personally, and unannounced.
When he arrived at the first health centre, at about 07.15, he found patients stretched out on the floor waiting to be attended, or huddled in front of office doors. No-one had made any attempt to organise these queues, or to treat the patients decently. Indeed the workers at this unit arrived and signed the clocking-in book whenever they liked.
Garrido told reporters that the inspectors had confirmed the complaints made by patients, and were concerned at the apathy shown by the directors of the health centres.
Absenteeism was rife: at one of the health centres, where work is supposed to start at 07.30, the inspectors found that 20 workers had not yet showed up. Some would only put in an appearance at the end of the morning.
"I noted that other workers are deliberately not using their name badges", said Garrido. "The workers arrive when they please, and treat the patients badly. We cannot allow patients to go on sleeping on the floor. Why don't the workers put benches here for the patients to sit on? Patients must be treated with respect. We have to treat a hospital as if it were our own house".
"When I sent the inspectors, they concluded there were many irregularities, including illegal charges, so we shall have to take measures", warned Garrido.
He dismissed arguments about staff shortages as mere covers for laziness. None of the 1,300 health units in the country had enough staff, the Minister pointed out, but that was no reason for tolerating disorganization.
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On the contrary, argued Garrido, each sector in each health unit had the obligation to ensure that it was well organised, so that it could attend to patients' needs properly.
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| Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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