COMMON DISEASES
Common diseases
We speak of the "Big Four" because it is these four priority areas that cause the majority of disease, suffering and even disability. Obviously, there is plenty else to keep us busy. The more services we offer, the more patients we find to make use of them - from people with disabilities, including hearing impairment, to oral and eye health needs.
HIV and AIDS. Antenatal surveys suggest a prevalence rate of about 35% in our area. That translates to an average of 18% of people over the age of 2 years being infected! Although we have an anti-retroviral (ARV) programme with over 10,000 patients currently active on treatment within our catchment area, fear and stigma remain significant obstacles in battling this epidemic and we still see people with end stage disease.
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Tuberculosis. This disease is still out of control in our district despite recent gains. The HIV/AIDS epidemic makes control of TB even more challenging, but the incidence has begun to decline as ARV uptake improves. We see many patients requiring re-treatment either after previous completion or defaulting of their first treatment. In recent years the incidence (or at least our detection of) multi-drug resistant TB has increased substantially - we see about 45 cases per year.
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Maternity related. Our maternity services have seen massive changes in utilisation rates over the past decade. From 745 deliveries in 2005, we did 2498 in 2020. We estimate that about 5-10% of woman in our catchment area still deliver at home. Monthly monitoring of peri-natal mortality has been conducted since August 2005. The peri-natal mortality rate in 2020 was 16.9 per 1000 for babies over 1000g. Our goal remains to get this under 15. We hope this reflects our increased efforts, but avoidable mortality continues, specifically reflecting challenges with ante-natal care and poor transport infrastructure in our area.
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Child Health. Major challenges in child health centre on immunisation, malnutrition and infectious disease. Infant mortality and morbidity remains relatively high, but has also improved substantially over the years. Our in-hospital mortality rate is just over 1%, compared to over 10% a decade ago. This reflects both the hard work of the staff and the success of the Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV programme. We have been auditing paediatric mortality since May 2007.
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In addition to the above we see a range of diseases including bilharzia, hypertension, diabetes, cardiac disease, septic wounds, ear infections, scabies and mostly minor trauma.
Disclaimer This website is not an official government one. Although we believe it to be accurate, it should be noted that all opinions expressed herein are those of the website authors and not the official hospital standpoint. The site is funded with private money in the hope of raising the Hospital's profile and attracting more people to come and serve in this special community.