Last week I traveled to one of the districts in my country. Now anyone who knows me knows that traveling and I are not really "friends". Although some of my best adventures where while I was traveling. Anyway I traveled because I had some work to do.
Like any other district far from the Capital city, it is not that industrialised and yet it is the source of most of the cement that has built this nation. However, the thing that struck me most was that we had gone to sign an Agreement with the district leadership to strengthen the health systems, yet we found the major government hospital closed. Staff were on strike because they had not been paid for months.
The once very active hospital is abandoned and is as silent as a morgue. Infact walking into the hospital, one gets the feeling that they are walking through a ghost town.
While looking around, we came upon the two ladies. By my colleague's estimation one is about 5 - 6 months pregnant. She had come to the hospital for her regular antenatal check up but found it closed. The other one is pregnant too but barely showing. According to her, she came to hospital because she felt some pain in her tummy (for lack of a better word). She was told that the health workers were on strike and would open the Antenatal Clinic on Monday (This was Wednesday).
As lay people, and not even employed by the hospital, we could only talk to them and sympathise. As people who work in the health sector and especially as women, we felt the patients' and the health workers' pain.
So as we signed the agreement to give the district money to strengthen health systems, we hoped that it would help to ensure that the district has it in mind that the human resources are part of the system to be strengthened.
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| The empty compound |
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| Waiting area |
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| Waiting area |
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| This was so dry, it had not been used in days |
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| The Antenatal Clinic was locked |
