Reports that over half of the healthcare facilities in the country do not take issues of water, sanitation and hygiene seriously are disheartening.<\/p>\n
Disheartening because, in the first place, healthcare facilities are synonymous with hope. People battered by disease and other conditions such as Aids get a sense of hope when they visit health facilities.<\/p>\n
No wonder, the Ministry of Health and Population Services introduced an initiative that has seen several healthcare facilities getting certificates of recognition for maintaining commendable levels of cleanness.<\/p>\n
Several public healthcare facilities in the country display these certificates in public places and treat them as a mark of achievement. This buttresses the point that high levels of hygiene are a prerequisite in the healthcare delivery system.<\/p>\n
It goes without saying, also, that the provision of potable water is a must in healthcare facilities. When communities have been ravaged by cholera and other outbreaks, nobody wants people to flock to a healthcare facility that will only expose patients to health risks because water available there is not fit for human use.<\/p>\n
We are, therefore, saddened that, while the parent ministry has tried to lead by example by introducing awards aimed at promoting levels of hygiene in healthcare facilities, we have a long way to go.<\/p>\n
In this time and era, especially when health facilities get a significant portion of national budget resources, it does not make sense for the country to disregard World Health Organisation standards on water, sanitation and hygiene issues.<\/p>\n
When 57 out of every 100 facilities are not safe, where will our people, most of them who cannot afford healthcare in private facilities, go?<\/p>\n
Moving forward, let us put our house in order. We do not want to find ourselves in a situation where our health facilities turn into death traps and our people die needless deaths in a place meant for the sustenance of life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reports that over half of the healthcare facilities in the country do not take issues of water, sanitation and hygiene seriously are disheartening. Disheartening because, in the first place, healthcare facilities are synonymous with hope. People battered by disease and other conditions such as Aids get a sense of hope when they visit health facilities. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":42927,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67137"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67141,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67137\/revisions\/67141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}