BY: Hadram Hydara
Dr Muhammed Ammar Al-Jafari, the newly reinstated Syrian Chief Medical Director (CMD) at the Edward Francis Small Teaching Hospital (EFSTH) has said he has had a long, successful meeting with the Minister of Health and Director of Health Services in which they put in place, among other things, a four-month “urgent plan” to acquire and add different unavailable medical apparatus and also embark on a “renovation” of the “private block” in the hospital.
“From now until December, we should have all radiology equipment available. We should have all lab and reagents available. We are trying to do a renovation for the private block and we will add seven haemodialysis machines. We are also working to have an oxygen plant in the hospital,” said CMD Jafari, while going further to appeal to the EFSTH staff and “everybody” to assist him in executing the said plan, which also includes, but is not limited to, “respecting working hours”.
“Please I need all of you to help me with this urgent plan. First of all, I need all of you (staff) to respect working hours; this is very important. The second issue is I need all of you to help me when I put cashiers and security in the departments; I need you to respect them. I want to control our income and our revenue. Thirdly, all of us need to respect patients’ lives, especially with emergency issues. From now on, if any patient comes to the emergency and needs life-saving like an urgent operation, we should do it directly. No excuse to wait for operation when patient’s life is at risk.”
Dr Jafari, who also served as CMD at the EFSTH under former President Jammeh and was, later on, relieved of duty by the Barrow government in 2017, said everybody needs to be involved, one way or the other, during operations and that there will be 24-hour anaesthesiologists accessibility at both Ndemban Clinic and EFSTH.
“When we need to do an operation, all of us need to support the surgical department about this issue. From now we are going to put anaesthetic technicians 24 hours on call in Ndemban and the main hospital. If a patient needs an urgent operation, we should do it right away and the management needs to support the surgical team to the operation; we need to work as a team.”
The experienced CMD further said the number one priority is patients’ lives and that slacking on the job will not be tolerated.
“The number one priority is the patient’s life, which we need to respect. I don’t want anybody to sit in his office and say okay this issue is not available. When any issue [arises] whether it is emergency, ICU, theatre or for any department, you should come to my office and I will find a direct solution. Patient life cannot wait. We cannot sit in our offices under the AC and lose a patient,” Dr Jafari warned.
