KIGALI - Shortage of manpower cited at Centre Hospitalier University de Kigali (CHUK) which is derails efforts to deliver healthcare to patients.

Dr Theobald Hategekimana told journalists yesterday that the country’s top referral hospital is faced with insufficient medical personnel and equipment.

Dr Hategekimana said that the hospital has 80 medical doctors, 27 of whom have postgraduate skills.  There are 348 nurses, 23 midwives, 86 paramedicals and three dentists, he said.

He said the hospital lacks equipment and materials like Computer Tomography Scanner (CTscan) for internal body health diagnosis and Celioscopy gadget for maternity services.
"We have a serious shortage of health manpower, not just medical personnel and equipment but also hospitalisation space like clinic pavilion,” he told a news conference in Chuck boardroom. 

Hategekimana said that like any other public hospital elsewhere in the world, CHUK has a huge debt burden. He said the debt is about Frw600 million, which was accumulated through acquisition of unpaid for health supplies from providers. Hategikimana cited the problem of non-payment of patients’ health insurance funds by some government institutions as one of the causes of the huge debt.

He also said that the hospital has creditors singling out Nyarugenge District, Kigali City, which owes the hospital Frw100 million.

"To be able to really deliver healthcare to our people, we have to raise enough money for running the needed services, but such debts are hampering us,” he explained  He said that the hospital administration has already addressed the problem to the Ministry of Health, and was waiting for a reply.

The doctor also said the CHUK is experiencing sudden patients’ referral influx from nationwide hospitals.

He also decried insufficient communication between hospitals in regard to patients’ transfers.

This has often led to overcrowding of patients at CHUK premises as a result of limited medical personnel and space to handle impromptu schedules.
"We are all overworked. That puts a lot of stress on the limited medical professionals we have,” he said. 
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