Maputo, 21/ 09/ 2022 – Following a campaign carried out by Saber Nascer and ASCHA – Non-Governmental Organizations working to combat obstetric violence and Gender Based Violence – for the donation of blood in favor of a young activist, interned in José Macamo General Hospital, several people have shown their solidarity.
However, the volunteers who went to the hospital could not proceed with the blood donation because the hospital allegedly did not have application forms to donors.
According to health professionals at that hospital, the printer was out of order and there was no other mechanism to print the necessary forms for doners to fill out.
This attitude left the donors astonished, without understanding why the hospital of this magnitude has no alternative to print a simple piece of paper, while there are printers in different departments.
One of the volunteers who goes by the name of Rita came across the barrier and could not believe that “a big hospital like that depends on a single printer.”
The most worrying thing, for the volunteer, is that the hospital very urgently asked the patient’s relatives to donate about seven liters of blood, but when they got there, they were told that there is no paper.
“We received the information that urgent blood was needed for a patient. When we got there, we stayed in line, and when it was time to go in, we were told that there are no longer y forms, nor could they print them because the machine was broken”, she said.
“Some people would have no way to come back the next day. We were sure that a hospital like that has several sectors that could, very well, print the forms, taking into account the urgency that the patient’s case required.”, she added.
In this context, “we began to doubt the urgency they claimed and raised the hypothesis that they wanted to take the blood for other purposes.”
“If it was urgent, could they have dispensed the blood collection?”, Rita inquired.
Managers Condemn Misbehavior
The Citizen Observatory for Health (OCS) called the administrator of the José Macamo Hospital Geral, Domingos Guento, who promptly stated that, in this case, there has probably been bad behavior of the professionals on duty, since there were never any missing forms and the printer was never broken.
The leader showed indignation with the attitude of the professionals who assisted the volunteers, and explained that even without forms the donation should not have been barred.
“It is not because of lack of paper that the benevolent blood donor cannot donate. This kind of issue has to do with the bad attitude of the colleagues. It was possible to count how many donors were there and take copies just for them. There is no impediment to that”, Guento stressed.
He also said that the hospital’s printer is working and that it hasn’t come down.
“We are running awareness campaigns and people of good will have shown up. Some colleagues are looking for arguments just because they don’t want to work. We don’t support this kind of behavior”, he added.
Guento, to further clarify the case, put us in touch with the head of the blood bank who immediately also distanced herself from the attitude of colleagues and asked “for us to help the Hospital by identifying professionals involved in banning volunteers so that they can be held accountable.”
“We need to put an end to this kind of attitude because if we do nothing these colleagues will continue to perpetrate these acts. So, we are asking you to help us identify them for further accountability”, she appealed.
“In the blood bank, there has never been a shortage of forms”, said the chief and, using the administrator’s arguments, said the forms would never prevent blood donation, because there are other means to replace the lack of files.
She also said that the hospital has several printers and that doesn’t depend on just one.
“In this context, we will check who were on duty on the day of this case to find out exactly what happened”, she stressed.