Nurses’ home is a health hazard

THE nurses’ home at the Katutura State Hospital is resembling an unhygienic slum tenement, hardly fit for occupation.

The Namibian visited the nurse’s home yesterday to see if the Health Ministry’s New Year’s resolutions much-needed maintenance work there, but all hopes were dashed by a horrible stench that hits you even before you enter the building. According to a resident, the smell is caused by a broken pipe in the basement that has been polluting the entire building since last year.Approached for comment, superintendent Andreas Kambongi said the leak had been reported to the plumbers at the Katutura Hospital, but still has not been fixed.’As you can see around here, everything is a mess. From the floors to the ceiling, this place is falling apart,’ he said.A tour of the eight-storey building led to more gruesome discoveries ranging from dirty bathrooms to leaking taps, blocked basins and toilets and broken elevators. Kambongi said part of the blame falls on the nurses who live there.’We provide the residents with cleaning materials, all they need to do is use them. We also want the Ministry of Works to send a maintenance team here to repair all the broken equipment and infrastructure. This has been our appeal for the past two years now and still we wait. It’s a new year and things need to change.’The home only has two cleaners assigned to the eight floors. The building is a health hazard to visitors and residents alike. The water leak in the basement is close to a power generator which could result in somebody being electrocuted. Using faulty elevators can also result in accidents.’I really hope that when the ministry sees this story they will come and fix this place and the same goes for the residents, who I hope will see to it that their living quarters are clean, as it is the healthy thing to do. Nurses should know that better than anybody else,’ added Kambongi.