By: Nyima Sillah
Dr. Abubacar Jange, the Deputy Chief Medical Director of Edward Frances Small Teaching Hospital (EFSTH) has justified the recent cause of machine failure at the hospital that triggered kidney patience to be sent to Africmed for dialysis.
In an exclusive interview with The Voice newspaper, Dr. Jange, a Nephrology and Consultant Nephrologist who doubles as Deputy Chief Medical Director of the RVTH, explained that the hospital recently had a breakdown of some machines and at some point, it took up to less than one or two of the machines working, this message was published in the media.
“We had that shutdown because the pumps of the machines were blocked. The backer one that we were using had some problems with the water purification and had caused that to happen. So, it turned unusual for the modalities to seem to have problems like this. Thus this happens everywhere in the world and the maintenance teams are the ones who should be able to fix it.”
He continued “Our country does not have a lot of those experts. We are training them but they have not got the skills for them to look at every problem we have and that was our shortcoming. So, we asked for help and when they came they helped.”
Dr. Jange explained that the hospital have a human biomedical engineer who was supposed to be the one looking after the machines but he had left and the one who was supposed to replace him did not arrive in the country from Cuba at the time because of logistics reasons.
However, the Deputy Medical Director disclosed that the problem has been resolved and they were able to fix most of the machines.
With that, they are trying to find out the cause of the problem and solve it. He noted that the issue was just a one-day issue and when it happened, they sent some patients to Africmed to get dialysis.
