Labour ward

The hospital is predominantly single story buildings which I think were built by the Italians when they were in Ethiopia in the middle of last century. There is a massive new hospital being built next door and it continues to grow slowly - but I hear that there are issues with funding coming from a few different places and I also hear that it has been in progress for a long time and is likely to take some time still to complete.

The conditions on labour ward are cramped and there is nothing that can be done about this presently. Obviously when the new hospital is built it will move there and presumably have more space but for the moment the conditions are as follows:
There is the antenatal room which consists of 6 beds and normally has two or three mattresses on the floor to accommodate further women. There are also 4 beds and additional mattresses in the corridor. It can be difficult to walk around and often you have to step over women lying on the floor. There is the labouring room which again has 6 beds. Fetal monitoring is generally done using the pinard fetal stethoscope but there is a ctg machine which is used for high risk patients - although there is no paper so you cannot read the ctg so it is just used as a measure of fetal heart beat. All examinations are done in this room so you can imagine there is very little privacy. Generally the women are alone during labour but sometimes there may be a female accompanying them. When the women are ready to give birth they walk through to the delivery room which has 2 delivery couches and the neonatal station - which is a table with a portable radiator on it to keep the babies warm. Theatre is at the end of the corridor where caesarean sections can be performed.

There is very little analgesia used here. MROP/ventouse/forceps/EUA are done with no analgesia/anaesthetic.

The doctors work extremely hard but essentially there just needs to be more of them!!