Destination Oshakati State Hospital

By: JANA-MARI SMITH

SERVING at least half of the Namibian population, the five-year upgrade and renovation project of the Oshakati State Hospital, is critical to five regions in Namibia.

Dr Shannon Kakungulu, the Medical Superintendent of the Oshakati State Hospital, explained that the hospital is recognised as the major go-to and referral hospital for the Oshana, Omusati, Ohangwene, Kunene and Oshikoto regions.
Dr Kakungulu said the hospital serves a catchment population of at least 750 000 people, which means that almost half of all Namibian’s consider this their primary medical treatment hub.
The hospital has struggled to accommodate the “population boom” of the North in recent years, Kakungula said, and wards have become too small in relation to the  steady increase of patients.
In response to the dire need of the hospital, and its patients, Government has committed to a large-scale expansion, upgrade and renovation project. Already the hospital grounds sprout a mix of new and old buildings, parts of which have been completely upgraded, while other divisions still show the wear and tear of the past 44 years.
The idea is that the hospital will be fully upgraded to serve as a “specialist hospital” Dr Kakungulu said, in order to minimise transfers to Windhoek, and centralise medical treatment in the heartland of the north.
One of the major benefits of the upgrade is the expansion of the maternity ward. The maternity award, one of the priority projects of 2010, will be fitted with two fully equipped operating rooms, while, before, had to get by with only four operating rooms available to the entire hospital.
Furthermore, the existing maternity ward, previously too small to accommodate mother’s before they are due to give birth, will be expanded to cater to mothers before, and after they have given birth.
The hospital itself is being expanded with 7 operating rooms, a major, and crucial, improvement.
Dr Kakungulu said the hospital has been selected as a training centre for interns as it “is the ideal training ground for medical students.”
The hospital deals with a range of injuries and illnesses that are rare in urban areas. Because the community lives in remote, spread-out settings, doctors and nurses often deal with wounds which have worsened over long periods of time, in which patients have tried to reach the hospital over difficult terrain.
“We deal with cases, like,  where a woman has been in labour for seven days. Or patients are sometimes brought to us five days after they were in a road accident.”
The hospital currently employs a total staff complement of 1300 people, of which 60 are doctors, 550 nurses and the rest are made up of support staff.
The specialities the hospital currently caters for, include internal medicine, paediatrics, orthopaedics, dental and eye surgery and family medicine. New specialities the hospital offers include plastic surgery and a psychiatric ward.
Also, in the next couple of years, a “nuclear medicine department will open … the first in the north.”
The hospital’s Tuberculosis treatment ward has received the honour of being recognised as the “best TB centre in the SADC region”, Dr Kakungulu said.
Although government committed N$320 million to the upgrade-project, over a period of five years, Dr Kakungulu said strategic public-private partnerships with corporates, boosted the project considerably.

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