Healthcare equipment and staff shortages

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What's your healthcare system like?

I live in the UK and I feel we often complain about how bad our healthcare system is with the long waiting times and all that. How often do we consider poorer and war-torn parts of the world, especially those isolated from humanitarian assistance?
Take Afghanistan, for example.
Three-month-old Tayabullah is quiet and motionless. His mother Nigar moves the oxygen pipe away from his nose and puts a finger below his nostrils to check if she can feel him breathing.
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www.bbc.com

Afghanistan: 'Nothing we can do but watch babies die'

The grim hospital where even basic needs cannot be met and children die of preventable diseases.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
This is so sad :(

Every day, 167 children die in Afghanistan from preventable diseases, according to the UN children's fund Unicef - illnesses that could and should be cured with the right medication.

It is a staggering number. But it's an estimate.

And when you step inside the paediatric ward of the main hospital in the western province of Ghor, you will be left wondering if that estimate is too low.
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Ventilator shortage
At this hospital in Afghanistan, there is not a single working ventilator.

Mothers hold oxygen tubes near their babies' noses because masks designed to fit their small faces are not available, and the women are trying to fill in for what trained staff or medical equipment should do.
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Staff shortage
Multiple rooms are full of sick children, at least two in each bed, their little bodies ravaged by pneumonia. Just two nurses look after 60 children.

In one room, we saw at least two dozen babies who appeared to be in a serious condition. The children should have been continuously monitored in critical care - impossible at this hospital.
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Funding
Public healthcare in Afghanistan has never been adequate, and foreign money which almost entirely funded it was frozen in August 2021 when the Taliban seized power. Over the past 20 months, we have visited hospitals and clinics across this country, and witnessed them collapsing.

Now the Taliban's recent ban on women working for NGOs means it's becoming harder for humanitarian agencies to operate, putting even more children and babies at risk.
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Currently there is a stop-gap arrangement in place. Because money can't be given directly to the internationally unrecognised Taliban government, humanitarian agencies have stepped in to fund salaries of medical staff and the cost of medicines and food, that are just about keeping hospitals like the one in Ghor running.

Now, that funding, already sorely inefficient, could also be at risk. Aid agencies warn that their donors might cut back because the Taliban's restrictions on women, including its ban on Afghan women working for the UN and NGOs, violates international laws.
Only 5% of the UN's appeal for Afghanistan has been funded so far.
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Cases
I asked Dr Samadi how much oxygen Gulbadan needs.

"Two litres every minute," he said. "When this cylinder gets empty, if we don't find another one, she will die."

When we went back later to check on Gulbadan, we were told that's exactly what had happened. The oxygen cylinder had run out, and she died.

The oxygen production unit at the hospital isn't able to produce sufficient oxygen because it only has power at night, and there isn't a steady supply of raw material.
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In another bed is Irfan. When his breathing became more laboured, his mother Zia-rah was given another oxygen pipe to hold near his nose.

Wiping tears that rolled down her cheeks with her upper arm, she carefully held both pipes as steady as she could. She told us she would have brought Irfan to the hospital at least four or five days earlier if the roads had not been blocked by snow.

So many simply can't make it to hospital, and others choose not to stay once they get there.
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"Ten days ago a child was brought here in a very critical condition," Nurse Sultani said. "We gave him an injection, but we didn't have the medicines to cure him.

"So his father decided to take him home. 'If he has to die, let him die at home'," he told me.
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@Shortie this thread will liekly interest you.
@Web Diva @fords8 what's the healthcare system like in the USA?
@Heatman you could teach us about Nigeria and @Stardom22 Nepal :)
 
I live in the UK and at the moment it is appalling to see just how bad the healthcare system is at the moment, not only due to strikes but also due to staff shortages as well.

I believe the last time I saw the waiting times for A&E in my area it was close to 24 hours which is shocking.

Would I hate to see us lose the NHS? Of course, I feel that would cause a lot more issues than helping the issues at hand but I do feel the government needs to do more to protect the NHS and right now, they are failing.
 
Shortie said:
I live in the UK and at the moment it is appalling to see just how bad the healthcare system is at the moment, not only due to strikes but also due to staff shortages as well.

I believe the last time I saw the waiting times for A&E in my area it was close to 24 hours which is shocking.

Would I hate to see us lose the NHS? Of course, I feel that would cause a lot more issues than helping the issues at hand but I do feel the government needs to do more to protect the NHS and right now, they are failing.
Click to expand...
24 hours? Wow. But I feel like some ppl abuse the A&E, or would you say that ppl who attend A&E are considerate and legitimately need urgent care?
 
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