Maputo — The crisis of a shortage of plaster in hospitals in the northern Mozambican city of Nampula is over - at least for another couple of weeks.
According to the independent television station STV, an emergency consignment of 90 kilos of plaster arrived in Nampula on Monday night. Patients who have suffered fractures can now have their limbs set properly in plaster. Given the lack of plaster, doctors had been resorting to pieces of cardboard to treat patients with fractures.
The Ministry of Health recognised this crisis and blames the company that won the contract to supply plaster. The company had allegedly abandoned its contractual responsibilities.
For the past month, doctors in Nampula Central Hospital have been using cardboard instead of plaster. Doctors worry that this improvisation means that bones will not heal properly.
On Tuesday, staff at the Central Hospital began to remove the cardboard from patients' limbs and treated them with plaster or plaster cast splints.
Orthopaedic doctor Hermenegildo Hua told STV that the hospital had received enough plaster for the next two weeks. "We can avoid the complications that may arise from treatments that are not recommended in cases of trauma', he said.
What happens after the next fortnight will depend on whether the hospital receives more plaster to meet its needs.
"Due to the lack of plaster, it was very complicated to care for patients with trauma', said Hua. "Alternative treatment had to be used'. In some cases, this led to complications, when the bones did not return to their normal positions.
Patients who had been treated with cardboard, he said, will now be submitted to medical assessments, and any "anomalous situation' can be corrected
The need for plaster is clear from the fact that the orthopaedic and trauma units in Nampula Central Hospital, the largest health unit in northern Mozambique, attended to more than 4,500 cases just in the first six months of this year.
The crisis is not limited to Nampula. On Wednesday, STV reported that Beira Central Hospital is also running out of plaster.
