Four mothers die at Jinja Referral Hospital over lack of blood, late referrals

Jinja, (UG):- The Jinja Regional Referral Hospital loses an average of four mothers per month due to a shortage of blood, late referrals and other complications, DailyExpress has learnt.

Speaking to this publication on Friday, the hospital director Dr. Alfred Yayi says some mothers experience serious bleeding resulting from ruptures, which calls for urgent transfusion of blood which may not be readily available.

“We lose about four mothers per month and much of it is because of late referrals and complications and also secondly lack of blood because when there are complications especially ruptures when someone is bleeding, they require to be urgently transfused with blood,” Dr. Yayi told DailyExpress during the exclusive interview.

Dr Yayi attributed the challenge of blood to the absence of a regional blood bank and the facility ends up rushing to Kampala for blood, which sometimes turns out to be a long process, hence risking the lives of patients. He confirmed that they are making efforts for Busoga to get a regional blood bank to address the concern.

“… But because we don’t have a regional blood bank, most times we have to run to Nakasero to pick blood and it sometimes takes time and you find that lives can be lost. That’s why we are making a lot of efforts to ensure that the Busoga sub-region gets a regional blood bank as soon as possible to address the challenge of blood,” Dr Yayi added.

The regional referral facility is also engaging with the lower level health facilities to ensure that they get the required capacity to do some of the simple operations (cesarean section), especially in health centre IVs and general hospitals to cut down the delays and save a number of lives.

The general death rate, this publication has learnt, is 4 per 1000 on a quarterly basis and the regional hospital and according to Dr. Yayi, they are coming up with a number of interventions to ensure that the death rates are pulled down.

However, the director told DailyExpress that on average, at least 530 babies are born every month at the hospital and out of those, about 170 babies are delivered through cesarean section.

Dr Yayi attributed the many cesarean sections to many referrals received by the facility from lower levels which are mostly complicated cases.

“We deliver up to 530 babies every month and out of this, about 170 are delivered through cesarean section because we receive a lot of referrals from lower levels and these referrals mostly are complicated cases of mothers who may not deliver normally,” he confirmed.