Kebba Ansu Manneh
Dr. Abba Hydara, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Shiekh Zayed Regional Eye Care Center (SZRECC) has dispelled rumours of the closure of the only eye hospital in the country, affirming that the hospital has suspended all elective operations due to lack of materials to carry out such operations.
His reaction comes on the heels of growing rumours that the Ministry of Health is responsible for the temporary ceasing of services at the hospital due to its reluctance to procure consumables and other essential for the smooth operation of the Regional Eye Care Center.
“I think it is factually wrong to say that the hospital is close, what we did was to suspend all elective operations but all emergency and urgent operations are not been cancelled. Emergency operations will continue to happen as they come but elective operations have to wait while we handle the situation,” CEO SZRECC disclosed.
He added: “The reason why we are suspending elective operations is because we ran out of certain consumables that are absolutely important to guarantee a safe eye operation and presently we are trying to resolve the issue.”
According to him, the hospital procurement and management team are working hand in glove to ensure that service is brought back to normalcy, adding that the hospital is also engaging suppliers that are understandings and cooperative in this difficult time.
“Like I said, we are handling emergencies, myself I did one perforated conical ulcer operation on Saturday, it was an emergency procedure that I did and on Sunday I reviewed the patient who is still on admission at the private block.
The situation is, we did not want to undertake any more elective operations because we did not have the materials to guarantee a safe operation,” Dr. Abba Hydara revealed.
He continued: “We don’t have eye drops, we don’t have some of the solutions and it is going to be too risky to do any surgery. Our hospital has not had any post-operative infection in many years, we guarantee safe surgery and we are not going to compromise or lower our standards to risk that.”
Dr. Hydara admitted that the situation will cause grieve distress to the teeming number of patients who are in need of eye surgery operations, observing that it will affect people who needed their visions back as well as the elderlies who are liable to home accidents.
“When people cannot see, it’s very distressing because they cannot be productive, they cannot move around, they depend on others. It could also be risky for elderly people because they can easily fall down, they can get fractures and lots of other issues including home accidents, fear is there for the patient,” Dr. Abba Hydara observed.
He added: “I want to assure all the patients that management is doing everything possible to start operations. We hope that by Monday coming next we will start full operation because the products we need are not make in West Africa, they are made in India, China and other countries and we have to procure from reliable suppliers whose production facilities have ISO certification and understand our challenges.”
CEO SZRECC hospital denied any direct or indirect involvement of the Ministry of Health, arguing that the situation is entirely an operational matters that the hospital procurement unit and management is doing everything possible to resolve as quickly as possible.
He said the ministry of health is giving out all the needed support in ensuring that everything is brought under control and for work to start, affirming that in two weeks times surgical eye operations will commence if everything goes as planned.