Did you know?
St Joseph’s often have to refer a patient because they have no medication. This means a patient would have to travel 32km and often, when they get to the referral unit they have ran out of medical supplies too. Inter Care donations will mean referrals could decrease.
Jezman explains the challenges around funds…
What are the challenges around funding at the hospital?
St Joseph’s hospital is a mission hospital so we don’t generate a lot of funds so we depend on donations. When we receive products like these (from Inter Care) we can give them to patients for free.
What is it like in the nearby community when they need treatment and how does it affect the stock levels at St Joseph’s?
We have a lot of patients in our community who cannot afford to pay for health service, so in that case we have to leverage the small resources that we have, to give to those needy patients. We do experience stock out. Sometimes it’s because we don’t have enough resources to buy the medications, sometimes it’s because the suppliers run out.
What happens when you don’t have any medication for your patients?
Some of the patients, they just stay in their homes because there’s no medications, some they try to ask relatives to send them money so they can buy medications.
It’s very sad that the patients have to suffer when we don’t have the funds to provide medications
How Inter Care helps…
The donated medicines help a lot. For example this amoxicillin, that is a very good product, even the packaging, makes it easier for a patient to take it. It’s expensive to get a product like this one. I would like to say thank you for the gifts. It gives us the opportunity to save lives as well. When you send us the products we don’t just keep them, we treat patients, we give them to the needy in our communities.