Outside ER/OP Entrance; Khartoum Public Hospital
This post had originally appeared in "500 Words Magazine"; http://500wordsmag.com/theme-of-the-month/health-care-system-a-desperate-need-for-reform/
I’m not Physician, but an Architect.. I’m not only an Unlisted Politician, but an Urban Manager.. My early touch with Healthcare was in my graduation, proposing a Public Hospital; which had earned A+.. My professional touch was the contribution to Dubai Healthcare City.. My personal memoir was losing my Granni by flu followed by stroke at Khartoum Hospital.. Because my spouse was an Anesthetist, I can claim to be Half-Physician..!!
To start with, we should admit having no Healthcare System in Sudan.. We only have a group of sincere professionals; who daily fight the odds to save the lives and reduce the pain.. Yet, Healthcare is not about sincere efforts or wishes, but coherent structures of soft, hard, logistic, managerial and financial services.. In 1970th WHO had appreciated a Sudanese Program for providing basic and early interventions for all Sudanese, allover Sudan.. The program was made by 7000 stations across the country.. This was our only well structured service in this controversial sector..
Advocating how our personnel are smart or dedicated is not the issue, as healthcare is a complex service; which requires lots of guidelines and tools to successfully deliver.. No one here wants to downgrade any efforts, or to denounce the wishes about improved service.. This talk is about quality, not in terms of technicalities, but in terms of governance..
We need to admit that there are no proper Healthcare Planning, Operations or Products.. What we have is merely shy glimpse of a service that should be hygiene; while the premises urinary stinks.. It should be critically responsive, while most ambulatories malfunction.. It should be professionally sustainable; while its Minister advise the personnel to migrate.. It should be national, while it is urban and central.. It should be progressive, while is uproot from accreditation and academics collaborations.. It should be public, while it swiftly becomes lucrative private enterprises.. Its logistics and pharmacies should be handy, while corrupt administrators and managers (whom many are Medical Professionals too) spare the efforts, not to secure operations and services.. etc..
The wishful reform will not typically commenced by the “Sudanese Code of Politicalizing Everything” or SCPE.. An independent syndicate will prove nothing, unless honoring the professional mindset.. Although our physicians spend 90% of their time; upgrading their medical knowledge, they spent the left 10% on politics rather than healthcare training, in both management and governance; which are extensively available online.. Worldwide, very few healthcare professionals are engaged in the public politics, while ours are mostly and proudly sink within.. Since the famous protest of 1964 led by nurses-in-uniform; till the latest extravaganza on the independent syndicate; can someone count the added values professionally and nationally..?
True Healthcare reform will get the momentum by its capable and integrated soft resources.. Not the enthusiastic personnel who are eager to change, but who are professionally capable to do..
How Change of Healthcare can be brought forward if the number of qualified planners, administrators, managers, financiers and auditors is not substantiated nor adequate..?
How Change of Healthcare can be brought forward if the number of qualified planners, administrators, managers, financiers and auditors is not substantiated nor adequate..?
Once we had a Government.. 1905
Not only in the Sudan, but across most underdeveloped countries, some professions are socially worshiped and epistemically misled: The Medical Practitioner is one. It is hard to trace the root causes for such syndromes, which apparently related to combination of the historical Shamanism and the present Fortunatism..
ReplyDeleteMedical Doctors are traditionally respected, whereas humans are mostly afraid for their lives and the consequences of illness and diseases. Also, they are relatively well paid; whereas people would pay anything to get well. Such respect and earning had elevated both social and intellectual ranks of MDs. On parallel, the system for qualifying those MDs still backdated in most cases; which would secure their benefits regardless how efficient there are..
I guess cleansing the profession from unfit trends and practices should work on both system revolutionization and professional syndication. On one hand to have qualified skillful practitioners, who master hands-on-the-trade (American style), and on the other corresponds with national structure of professions and affiliations that value everyone, including the Garbage Collectors (if any)..