By Kebba AF Touray
The Gambia National Audit Office (NAO) has indicated health facilities are challenged with the late disbursement of Result Based Fund (RBF).
The RBF, as explained by the NAO, is crucial in facilitating and ensuring the timely procurement of essential drugs.
The audit stated that the facilities are also constrained by the unavailability of blood banks and blood to carry out blood transfusions and the lack of theatre with a surgeon or medical doctor and equipment.
The NAO revealed this in its performance audit report on its follow-up on the Emergency Obstetric Care (EmOC) by the Ministry of Health in 2023.
Dilating on the availability of medical equipment, the NAO explained that medical equipment and tools are crucial to saving a person’s life or performing any procedure, detecting and diagnosing problems/diseases at a very early stage, stressing that this aids health facilities to provide prompt care and treatment.
This, it reported, will also aid the facilities in monitoring and measuring patients’ vital signs, identifying any abnormalities and keeping accurate track of patients’ conditions and state of health.
NAO detected: “We found that certain important maternal and neonatal assessment equipment were not available in some of the facilities visited. This equipment includes suctioning machines, scanning machines, oxygen cylinders, and Doppler”.
The NAO cited the case of Kuntair and Kuntaur Major Health Centers that did not have any of these equipment available in their facilities to perform a comprehensive and quality treatment to patients.
“The main challenges that were highlighted by most of the health facilities were lack of adequate midwives, unavailability of blood banks and blood to carry out blood transfusions, and lack of theatre with a surgeon or medical doctor and equipment, and inadequate ambulances for referrals,” NAO highlighted.
It added that the facilities are also faced with the lack of scanning machines, and late disbursement of Result Based Fund (RBF) to ensure timely procurements of essentials drugs.
In light of the above, the NAO concluded that the provision of EmOC at health facilities has improved and that the Ministry of Health (MoH) has taken reasonable actions to address some of the findings of the report as highlighted above.
It, however, indicated that there remain underlying challenges affecting the efficient and effective provision of Emergency Obstetric Care in most health facilities.
