OUTAPI District Hospital records about four premature births in a month but the newborn babies are kept in two outdated incubators.
The situation will change for the better, according to the deputy minister of health, Juliet Kavetuna, who received two new high tech incubators on behalf of the government recently.
They were donated by Model Prayer International.
“For us that is partnership. It brought government and private together. Everyone should play a role in service delivery and not just wait for government to deliver,” Kavetuna said at the handover.
She explained that since the hospital is a district hospital, it does not have a great number of premature births and when they do occur, “the newborns are kept at the hospital for a few hours and transported to Oshakati (State Hospital) afterwards”.
Model Prayer International senior pastor Henry Ndozi-Okia said they decided on the donation after seeing the dire need for incubators at the hospital.
Ndozi-Okia said he was a twin himself and was born prematurely. Thus he was touched to see twins sharing one incubator at the hospital.
He said their church visited the hospital’s maternity ward in June 2014 to conduct an assessment on the state of the health facility and to determine the needs with a motive to help.
“I had to be in an incubator for me to receive the required treatment that would keep me alive. When I saw the need for an incubator at the hospital, and the condition of twins sharing one incubator, I was deeply touched and took an undertaking to seek for funds that can secure an incubator to meet that important need that will support the government’s effort of quality health for all in Namibia,” Ndozi-Okia said.
He said ErongoMed has agreed to provide free routine maintenance service for the incubators for a period of two years.
Ndozi-Okia said they will also provide a qualified clinical training nurse to the ward on the technical functional including the maintenance of the incubators as well as transport and install the incubators.
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