Doctors Abandon Isolation Centre At Connaught Hospital

Country Director of UK-based Kings Health Partners, an organisation that currently operates in Sierra Leone, Francis Kaikumba, has expressed disappointment over the abandonment of the refurbished former Ebola isolation centre, after his organisation spent close to a million pounds sterling to rehabilitate and transform the centre into a special emergency unit with 79 beds.

"With funds from the Department of International Development (DFID), we have rehabilitated the centre and the outpatient edifice with extra facilities that are first of its kind in Sierra Leone," he said, adding that a resuscitation machine and oxygen inhaler to help unconscious patients were made available in the hospital for the first time.

He pleaded with the public to be making the best out of the facility regardless of the paucity of doctors at the unit.

He disclosed that the number of patients that visit the unit was increasing by the day and that they intend to expand the project by rehabilitating the trauma ward for victims who involved in severe accidents and become traumatised.

He mentioned lack of maintenance as one of the challenges facing the unit, adding that they would facilitate a training of specialist doctors to man the facility

Meanwhile, Concord Times discovered that the centre has been abandoned because doctors are fearful of contracting the Ebola virus disease there.

- See more at: http://www.sierraleonepress.com/sierra-leone-doctors-abandon-isolation-centre-at-connaught-hospital/#sthash.t0Af3tVr.dpuf