'Maintenance Is Essential in Hospitals'

Dr. Pierre Joseph Fouda, Director, Yaounde Central Hospital talks on the need for maintenance culture.

How do you assess the state of equipment in the Yaounde Central Hospital?

I can say that the equipment that we have in the Yaounde Central Hospital today is to enable better care and treatment of patients in the hospital. Naturally, science is evolving and most of these equipments are old and should be replaced. It is a financial problem because medical equipment is expensive. However, what is important is not to get the equipment but to ensure the life span of the equipment through good maintenance.

Does equipment stay faulty because it is not of good quality or that there are no maintenance staff?

The problem of maintenance is complicated. The Yaounde Central Hospital, for example, was opened in 1933. And at 80, there are maintenance problems linked to the age. The maintenance of equipment in a hospital is essential. We cannot carry out a good diagnosis today if we do not have good equipment. We cannot take good care of patients if there is no good equipment.

For example, in the theatre, there should be equipment for anaesthesia among other equipment. If the equipment is not working, we cannot carry out a surgical operation. We have a problem because there should be qualified staff, competent enough to ensure the maintenance and also train the staff that is using the personnel at the level of maintenance. There are two types of maintenance.

There is preventive maintenance and curative maintenance. The second problem is that we have is that we buy the equipment in Europe and sometimes in China. When there is a problem with the equipment, we have to place an order and it takes a long time which results in a delay in repairing equipment.

Do you have training programmes for maintenance staff?

Training is essential but what we are doing is insufficient because there is specialisation. For example, a person who does maintenance in radiology is specialised in that domain. In the theatre, there should be somebody who is specialised in the equipment. Similarly, there should be somebody who is specialised with equipment of the laboratory. Somebody too should be specialised in the mortuary's air conditioning system.

So, we need engineers for a structure like the Yaounde Central Hospital to take care of maintenance of equipment. The size of the hospital alone poses a problem. I have already discussed with the hierarchy which is so sensitive to that. The government is putting much effort in maintenance. So I think we are evolving. But basic training is necessary because they are the ones who use the equipment everyday. They have to be taught on how to put the machines, disconnect, etc.