By Fatou Saho
Africmed International Hospitals has aided Sukuta Health Centre with an ambulance as referral challenges hit the community health centre for three months, leaving nurses and patients in frustrating conditions.
The Chief Medical Director and Proprietor of Africmed, Dr. Omar Jagne, presented the ambulance to the health centre on Tuesday with a pledge to include the vehicle in the maintenance of Africmed’s own fleet of ambulances for a certain period.
Dr Jagne also urged the staff and nurses of Sukuta Health Centre to take good care of the ambulance, highlighting “the ambulance has two bottles of oxygen so that when one is finished, the other one can be used. I hope the people of Sukuta and people around this end, both Gambians and non-Gambians, will benefit from it”.
The Principal Nursing Officer of the health centre, Landing Camara, stated that the ambulance came right in time, as the centre had a referral minutes after its much-needed arrival.
“A taxi arrived with a pregnant woman just when the ambulance came in. The woman was having a placenta previa with a haemoglobin of five. It is no doubt that the woman would have died here without the ambulance. We are so excited and grateful to receive it. We receive so many accident cases here daily, and it is always a challenge for us to refer them for emergency resuscitation and treatment at a higher level due to lack of ambulance. It was a nightmare for us as a facility having to work without an ambulance since October. Dr Jagne has saved us from that nightmare,” Landing Camara noted.
The Regional Director of Health Services, Dr Musa Camara, mentioned that Sukata Health Centre has registered 117 referrals from the labour ward and 208 from the A&E between October and December 2023.
He therefore thanked the management of Africmed International Hospitals for their timely intervention and addressed it to be part of complementing government’s efforts in making healthcare affordable and accessible.
