Windhoek Central Hospital has bats in the belfry

FAIRLY well-identified flying objects caused an impromptu work stoppage at the surgical theatres of Namibia’s biggest State hospital on Wednesday morning, highlighting poor management and deteriorating hygiene, health officials said.

Nurses in the theatre refused to prepare patients for operations after weeks of complaining about bats that have made the hospital wards a comfortable home. The nurses undertook the strike both out of fear of the bats gliding around them and concern that the tiny mammals may be carrying dangerous microbes, which could infect patients under the scalpel.Windhoek Central Hospital public relations officer Odette Demoura pleaded ignorance about the nurses’ strike, claiming that “operations went normally”.The strike lasted a couple of hours.A journalist who visited the theatre wing Wednesday morning met several nurses and doctors hovering around, complaining that hospital management had failed to clear the area of the unwanted new tenants for some weeks.One doctor related how he struggled to remove a bat that clung to his back the previous day.Another was outraged that hospital and Ministry of Health management were taking matters of hygiene lightly.The work stoppage provided a moment for doctors and nurses to exchange tales about the steadily worsening hygiene in Namibia’s health centres.A doctor related how a fellow health professional recently died in South Africa after contracting a rare case of rabies when a bat landed on him during a conference at the Sun City tourist resort.But the Permanent Secretary of the health ministry, Dr Kalumbi Shangula, said the strike “was not a big issue” and that only one doctor was instigating nurses not to continue working.Shangula said the bats were only in one ward and “just flying in the corridors”, allowing work to continue in others.Some of the doctors, however, were adamant that the surgical wards should have been shut down and fumigated to prevent any risk of contamination.* Tangeni Amupadhi is a journalist with Insight magazineThe nurses undertook the strike both out of fear of the bats gliding around them and concern that the tiny mammals may be carrying dangerous microbes, which could infect patients under the scalpel.Windhoek Central Hospital public relations officer Odette Demoura pleaded ignorance about the nurses’ strike, claiming that “operations went normally”.The strike lasted a couple of hours.A journalist who visited the theatre wing Wednesday morning met several nurses and doctors hovering around, complaining that hospital management had failed to clear the area of the unwanted new tenants for some weeks.One doctor related how he struggled to remove a bat that clung to his back the previous day.Another was outraged that hospital and Ministry of Health management were taking matters of hygiene lightly.The work stoppage provided a moment for doctors and nurses to exchange tales about the steadily worsening hygiene in Namibia’s health centres.A doctor related how a fellow health professional recently died in South Africa after contracting a rare case of rabies when a bat landed on him during a conference at the Sun City tourist resort.But the Permanent Secretary of the health ministry, Dr Kalumbi Shangula, said the strike “was not a big issue” and that only one doctor was instigating nurses not to continue working.Shangula said the bats were only in one ward and “just flying in the corridors”, allowing work to continue in others.Some of the doctors, however, were adamant that the surgical wards should have been shut down and fumigated to prevent any risk of contamination.* Tangeni Amupadhi is a journalist with Insight magazine