St. Joseph’s Catholic Hospital faces maintenance challenge

The Director of the St. Joseph’s Catholic Hospital in Congo Town, Mr. Peter LansanahDawoh, has disclosed that the hospitalis faced with serious maintenance challenged due to its current location in Congo Town, suburb of Monrovia.

He said the hospital is close to the sea, which poses serious corrosion problem as nearly all of its buildings are rot in rust from the sea water, and appealed to national government for urgent intervention. The St. Joseph’s Catholic Hospital, which is being operated by the Catholic Archdiocese of Monrovia has provided and continues to provide vital health services to the people of Liberia.

Speaking Monday, 21 March at the close of a four-day strategic direction development workshop held in a local guesthouse in Monrovia, Director Dawoh also called on partners to assist the hospital in this venture. He said the workshop was all about formulating a five-year development plan for the hospital.

He also disclosed the hospital is faced with a problem of being dominated by foreign doctors as opposed to Liberian doctors, noting that part of the strategicdevelopment workshop was to develop a five-year program that would lead to training more local doctors to take over the 53 years old hospital.

He recalled that eightmembers of the staff at the St. Joseph’s Hospital died in August, 2014 during the Ebola outbreak after they attended to infected patients, when in fact, the hospital was unprepared for the disease hence, the tragic consequences.

Also speaking, the head of the workshop, Mrs. Carole Green said, the aim or importance of the strategic plan is to set up a future direction of the hospital in the next five years. She said efforts are being exerted to train more local doctors to make services to the public sustainable.

By Bridgett Milton-Edited by Jonathan Browne