Editor,

I was very shocked last Friday when I took my child to King Faisal Hospital for immunisation and was told that the BCG vaccine is out of stock at the hospital! The shocking news is that King Faisal Hospital gets the vaccine from Kacyiru (Kacyiru Police Hospital, according to what the nurse told me) which is less than 5 km from King Faisal Hospital.

I believe that the nurses and doctors in the immunisation should have noticed in time that they were running out stock and made a request for more vaccine; in an efficient hospital the request should not take more than eight hours.

I’m not an expert in vaccines but in normal circumstances a hospital has a freezer where it keeps enough stocks of vaccines, a nurse is supposed to monitor the stock according to the number of children immunised in that hospital and has the responsibility to make sure that the stock is not running out.

I strongly believe that something like this undermines the government efforts to improve maternal and child health. It defeats logic how a hospital within less than 5km from the source/supply of the vaccine runs out of stock, not to mention that this is a hospital that we consider to offer excellent quality care.

The management of King Faisal Hospital should do something to make sure that this does not happen again in the future.

Mugisha Sharon
Kimihurura
mugisha_sharon@yahoo.com