Mituelle de Sante program’s failure to pay a staggering Rwf 400 million to Gahini Hospital, is throttling its operations and the capacity of delivering medical services to members of the public. By extension, families of medical workers at the hospital are feeling the pinch since there’s lack of adequate finances for timely payment of their salaries. At times the hospital fails to meet water and energy bills. And at times the hospital runs out drugs.
Despite the fact that the matter has been taken to various levels of Kayonza district authority, all has been in vain.
The director of Gahini Hospital, Dr Muvunyi Alphonse, says that the debt accumulated is having serious negative repercussions to the hospital and the public.
“In the past thirteen months, we have received payments for only 4 months. We are incapacitated. We need to pay employees, pay water and electricity bills among other operations. The debt we are referring to was accumulated before Rwanda Social Security Board took its management, “he says.
“The problems we have are beyond our capacity. Despite the inadequate number of nurses at the hospital, there is also a problem of retaining them on the job. This is a big challenge. Specialists hired from abroad do not last long live since the hospital cannot maintain them,” Dr Muvunyi explains.
“We only nurses with one to three years of experience working at the hospital. These nurses are young graduates who don’t stay for long at this hospital since it is in rural location, so they opt to look for other jobs in cities and towns with better salaries or leave for further studies,” he belabors.
“We have 10 permanent nurses but they are not enough compared to the number of patients coming to this hospital. Only one instead of three nurses stays overnight,” adds Dr Muvunyi.
During the handing over ceremony of the management of mituelle de santé to RSSB, the permanent secretary in MINISANTE, Dr Solange Hakiba promised that they were to seek solution and find a way of paying off the debt.
“We are seeking all ways of getting funds to settle the debt of Rwf 13 billion. We don’t wish to inherit debts to RSSB,” she said. The research conducted by the Ministry of Local Government across the country indicated that mituelle de santé owes over Rwf13 billion to hospitals.
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