The national parliament has been told to pay particular attention on why services provided by the National Referral Hospital are poor or not up to expected standards.
Dr George Kabwere who represented all doctors working at the hospital has told a Parliamentary special select committee which is conducting an inquiry that the quality of hospital services provided by the hospital have come under a lot of scrutiny from the public in recent years.He said the core of the problems is a shortage of manpower, as a lot of local doctors left to work overseas for better pay.
Dr Kabwere said the doctors' scheme of service is unreasonable and is the biggest white collar lie in this country.
He said doctors, nurses and laboratory staff who worked very hard for the nation do not have the motivation.
He said there is also a shortage of nurses as many of them have left the nursing service for better paid jobs or activities.
Dr Kabwere said a lack of professional medical equipment is one of the many problems affecting hospital services.
"Talking about the laboratory services, especially because its an important indicator to quality of medical services, there are times when we cannot do medical tests simply because we do not have re-agents. Just a simple re-agent makes a lot of difference in the quality of the service. Think about people who have prostate cacinoma. They have to wait for two or three weeks or even four weeks to even get a PSA result from Australia. These are little things Mr chairman. How about we were given a chance to have them in this country. Would it have made any difference to the service, of course, yes."
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