ADMISSION wards at Ndola Teaching Hospital are full and our in patient wards upstairs are nearly full, says Senior Medical Superintendent Dr Joseph Musowoya.

And Dr Musowoya says hospital management has stopped visitations because it is not safe.

He said only critical patients would have one bed sider.

“During the first wave of the disease, we saw a reduction in the number of patients coming to the hospitals and reduced to about two thirds and our hospital burden in terms of inpatients reduced. We have gone back to the old statistics whereby, in every one moment, the hospital is nearly full, so our admission wards are full, and our in patient wards upstairs are getting full,” Dr Musowoya said.

“This is not a good picture, but we want to encourage especially the bed siders, those that want to come and visit, that visiting is not allowed. For patients that are very ill, we may allow a bed sider, but for patients that can do most of the things by themselves, there is no need to have a bed sider.”

He warned that hospitals were hotspots for infectious diseases.

“Remember the hospital is not just a place where people come to get cured, but it’s a hub of most of the illnesses, including Covid. You can get other infectious diseases like Tuberculosis, and diarrhea diseases, among other things. So we need to be very cautious when coming here at the hospital because it is not a safe place remember, we have been talking of social distance, now if we crowd, we will fail,” said Dr Musowoya.

“We don’t want this covid to come back in the third wave, I think it will be catastrophic.
We need support from the people, the security is not working against the people. It is for our own good and benefit for all. Otherwise, the hospital you need to stay away, even for us, it’s just that we are well trained and we have enough PPE that is why we are coming in.”