A little bit of Maldivian healthcare

With every new Presidency, the citizens of the Maldives are promised better healthcare and better services, but by now we all know better than to believe it. The story of having to wait hours in the queue, sometimes months and years waiting for your turn at the hospital never got less frequent. To this day, if an appointment is made at the public hospital in the capital city of the Maldives, the wait is long but these are the sacrifices being made for the only affordable healthcare available in the country. 

But that is not all. It appears that the hospitals in the Maldives are also lacking the equipment to provide the services necessary, which might explain some of the delays. 

Recently some concerns were raised by a local news media following a Tweet by a doctor requesting the donation of an ultrasonography (USG) machine for the intensive care unit of the Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital (IGMH). Following this tweet, the newspaper published an article highlighting the lack of basic facilities in IGMH, largely highlighting the Tweet by the doctor as a reference point.

With this, IGMH released a statement giving an explanation of why the hospital takes such a  long time to source and replace equipment. According to the hospital, as they have to stay within certain guidelines due to the Government’s Public Finance Act, they have to largely take into consideration the price, quality and other factors before purchasing a piece of equipment, which sometimes becomes challenging. And while it is understandable that the hospitals have some guidelines to follow, it is extremely concerning for a state-run hospital to be in need of necessary equipment and still not be able to acquire them. 

With a doctor of the hospital having to Tweet out requesting for the donation of machinery, the state of the healthcare of the Maldives is yet again brought into the spotlight.