Meet Dr. Nsame Denis, Director of the Bamenda Regional Hospital in this video as he wishes all and sundry a successful and prosperous 2022, shares insights of the hospital’s high and low moments of the year 2021 and elaborates on the way forward for the hospital for 2022
Web Admin: Greetings Doctor and happy to see you this 2022. What is your New Year message to your collaborators, hierarchy at the regional and national level as well as the population.
Doctor Nsame: I am Dr Denis Nsame, Director of the Regional Hospital Bamenda and at this beginning of the year 2022, I want to wish all my collaborators, the administrators and all the staff, the 510 staff of the Regional Hospital of Bamenda a prosperous new year 2022, not forgetting my immediate hierarchical boss, the Regional Delegate of Public Health and the administration of the North-West Region and of course the Minister of Public Health who gave me the confidence and appointed me to this hospital. Thank you.
Web Admin: What were the successes/challenges recorded for 2021?
Doctor Nsame: The year 2021 was not an easy year for the Regional Hospital Bamenda. First of all I think I can list the achievements. We were the best Regional Hospital in Cameroon. It was really amazing when it was pronounced in Yaounde in front of the Minister of Public Health amongst the fourteen Regional Hospitals in Cameroon. Of course we have had some achievements too that maintained us at this position. Talking of improvement in mother and child care, we have renovated the Post Natal Unit and the Neo Natal Unit and also we have continued managing COVID-19. You know when we talk of 2021, we were still in the heart of the pandemic where we treated close to three thousand five hundred and twelve (3512) positive cases of COVID-19 and of course in Ophthalmology and Gynecology too I will tell you that we had this innovation that started in this hospital. We have done more than forty endoscopic surgeries. When we talk of Endoscopic surgery we mean the intervention without opening the abdomen. For women having blocked tubes, women having ectopic pregnancies that are not raptured, operations can be carried out without actually opening the abdomen.
We have the management of gender-based violence. You know with the crisis in the North West Region there are a lot of atrocities. Gender-based violence is very much around us. Well we have managed more than five hundred (500) cases of gender-based violence. Another achievement is in our intensive care unit where our major partners like the WHO came and renovated the unit. So we can now boast of 10 beds in the Reanimation Unit with pipes of oxygen passing through the wall and also the Ministry boosted this unit by installing a Central Oxygen System .
I will not forget donations from some major partners like the City Council that donated a brand new 160 AV generator to curb the energy crisis, not forgetting a lot of financial donations from the City Council , the mayor to alleviate the burden of unpaid bills which is a major challenge for us. That brings me now to the challenges.
We have had so many challenges and the crisis has brought us a good number of the challenges where we have registered about 97 cases of gunshot injuries. 88 cases of deaths due to gunshots were received at the mortuary of the Regional Hospital Bamenda. Another big challenge has been unpaid bills. In 2021we had 38 million of unpaid bills, meaning that patients who were treated, who came for medication and were treated and could not pay their bills. So, 38 million of our bills are still unpaid.
Web Admin: Doc, so what are the prospects for the Bameda Regional Hospital for the year 2022?
Doctor Nsame: Now in 2022 the first thing is to maintain our position as best hospital in Cameroon by improving patient reception. That has been a great challenge so we want our patients to be well received in our health facility. We also have to continue informing the public of the services offered. We have internists, nephrologist, neurologist, Neurosurgeons (people who can operate the brain/spine), orthopedic surgeons (those in charge of the bones) and recently we have had one so we can boast of 2 orthopedic and trauma surgeons in the hospital, we have stomatology, ophthalmology (eye services),
Gynecologist, not forgetting the Listening and Orientation Unit for Gender-based violence-related issues. If you have been traumatized or victimized in whatever community you are please urged to just come to the Listening and Orientation Unit of the hospital and you will be taken care of and free of charge by our partners, Médecins du Monde. Many people come asking the services we offer which gives us the impression that they are ignorant so we have to do a lot of social marketing through the media. Taking care of HIV is also our major concern for 2022. We still have over 5500 clients we are taking care of and more than 96% already have their viral loads suppressed.That is the success we are getting to. We will not forget our diabetic clinic where we will continue to screen for diabetes and hypertension. We also have to increase activities in our Imaging Centre. It is very important to inform our public that the brand new CT Scan we have just received is already 99% installed and is going functional in the days ahead. It will be put at the disposal of our population. All the CT Scans which used to be done out of the hospital will now be done in the hospital. We will also continue the fight against COVID-19 because it is not yet over. We will continue good management in the newly constructed 25-bed VIP Centre. which we have aptly baptized “Solidarity Ward”. We use it for the management of COVID-19 so we will continue to manage properly these cases. We are obviously going to continue vaccinating the population against COVID-19 because that is the way out of the pandemic. We call on the population to come for vaccination for there have been a lot of fake messages on social media talking about ills of vaccination. I want to tell everyone that vaccination is very important for us. Close to 6000 doses have already been administered and no death recorded as an effect of the vaccine. We are going to continue collaborating with traditional healers; you know the Ministry of Public Health collaborates with traditional medicine.
It is equally important to talk here about bonesetters. It is good to let them know know the type of fractures they can manage and the ones they cannot manage so that they refer them to the specialists, ĺI mean the bone surgeons that we have, so that they manage them and our patients will have quality health care. Thank You
WebAdmin: Thank you too Doctor for the insight
