Mr Andrew Cairns of the Friends of St Francis’ Katete Charitable Trust reports on 18 february 2021 that the oxygen plant has now arrived at St Francis’ Hospital.  The plant is located between York Ward, Theatre and the Laboratory.  The building to house the plant is under construction. Mr Cairns wishes to thank everybody who kindly donated towards this project.
The Friends of St Francis’ are now trying to raise funds to pipe oxygen to the wards and also to provide the plant with an uninterruptible power supply.

Most of the electrical power in Zambia is provided by hydro-electricity principally from Lake Kariba, Kafue Gorge and the Luapula River.  Towards the end of the dry and at the beginning of the wet seasons (the dry season is normally from March to October), water levels dwindle – reducing capacity.  With a growing population, there is not enough power to go around and therefore power cuts are the norm.  Whilst the hospital has two rather old electricity generators that run on diesel during the power cuts, they are very expensive to run.  Zambia has an abundance of sunlight so it is logical to consider solar energy to power the oxygen plant.
If you would like to make a donation to pipe oxygen to the wards and for solar energy for the oxygen plant, please click here: donate.  As the Friends of St Francis Katete is a Charitable Trust, UK tax-payers can Gift Aid the donation.  If this applies to you, please tick the relevant box when making the donation.

Message from the Superintendent Dr Lalick Banda:
“Welcome to the first monthly bulletin for St Francis’ Hospital. It is my sincere hope that through this monthly bulletin we will be able to share with our colleagues and partners the various developmental milestones at the hospital, our aspirations and the challenges we are facing as an institution.

Download the bulletin here.

Ms Chaze Sibamba, Social Worker at St Francis’ Hospital reports:
“More measures have been put in place, handwashing points have been put around the hospital and at the Main Entrance, all clients coming in the hospital have to go through the triage shelter which is just somewhere outside, where they are asked of any history of travel and other questions related to covid. The guards at the entrance always have boxes for the face masks, given to all clients entering the hospital.
Bedsiders are not allowed in the wards to avoid congestions, only one person is allowed but are also adivised to stay outside the ward and only enter when needed. They not allowed to bring children.

Testing was mandatory but now the government changed the system to only test individuals with suspected symptoms. So now at OPD there room 9 tis being used for swabbing and testing clients. Room 6 is being used as a holding room for clients that do not look too stable.. If the condition is bad the District Office is informed, who then evacuate the patient to Kalindawalo Isolation center.
The stable clients are given treatment and then sent home to self isolate. The positive thing is that the number of days for isolation was reduced from 14 days to only 5 days. After 5 days one is required to come back for a re-test, if positive again another 5 days of quarantaine is obligatory. I feel the decision was brought to reduce the shortages.
Students from the nursing school are back, so they are actually assisting a lot at the wards.

The schools date of opening was delayed by 2 weeks from 18th January to 1st February. This was after the president directed that all schools must put covid preventive measures in place, and yesterday on ZNBC news the media went to schools to check if all was in place. From my observation and what was being reported it seems most schools had prepared well.”