Former patient donates medical equipment to referral hospital  

By our reporter

A former patient at Masaka Regional Referral Hospital has donated medical equipment to the Physiotherapy department worth Shs6 million.

Wesley Forde expressed concern while handing over the equipment to the hospital Principal Administrator Edward Kabuye, over lack of basic equipment at the hospital.

Forde noted that while receiving treatment at the regional referral hospital, he realized that the physiotherapy department lacked basic equipment which prompted him to come up with the idea of donating some items to the hospital.

“I realized there was a challenge of both equipment and medical staff, it’s important to have staff and we need the ministry of health to know that physiotherapy should not be isolated and referred to as an emergency because whenever a patient undergoes surgery needs physiotherapy for healing well so they should consider posting more staff and equipment as well,” Forde added.

Some of the items include Elbow crutches, Ultra sound machine, and CP chair for cerebra pulse children, walking frames, stationary bicycle for children, standing frames, gloves, among other items.

The former patient said the department like other units need to be well equipped with physiotherapists to work on patients and that  is why he tried to secure some equipment for children first and he is optimistic that by the end of the year, he will manage to mobilize more funds to get equipment for even adult patients.

The Hospital Principal Administrator, Edward Kabuye, thanked Forde for the generosity and promised to put the items donated to the hospital into proper use.

“It’s rare for individuals to come up with such decision to donate to the government aided health units, but we thank our former patient who realized the lack of basic equipment we had at the physiotherapy department and he mobilized funds to procure an assortment of items for this department,” he said.

Fred Mayanja Mujuzi, the Principal Physiotherapist and head of Physiotherapy department says they are overwhelmed by the number of patients they receive at the unit since it’s the only unit for physiotherapy patients in the entire region.

He however says that they are stuck with the challenge of limited staff and equipment saying that the donation will help much in improvement of service delivery at the physiotherapy department.

He says that they receive at least 20-30 patients in a day but they are only two staff asking the line ministry to consider posting more medical workers at the unit.

Mujuzi says there are many other patients in communities that can’t access the hospital and many have end up getting disabled because they can’t get physiotherapy in time.

Records at the department indicate that the unit receives over 4000 patients both in and out patients annually.