Nurses return home after artillery shell lands near hospital

04 May 2019

Nyo Tun/ DMG

May 3, Sittwe

Following an artillery shell landing near the cottage hospital in Zeditaung village, Buthidaung Township, on the evening of May 2, nurses returned home, thus creating difficulty to operate the hospital, the doctor said.

Dr Min Soe Aung, the doctor of the cottage hospital, said: “We always hear the sound of artillery fire, but shells never land here. However, an artillery shell landed near the hospital yesterday, we were scared. Nurses were crying. I can’t persuade them to stay here.”

“We have four nurses and I had to allow all of them to go back home. Now, we have to run the hospital with two workers and myself,” he said.

Currently, there are some maternity cases, ill children and elders from IDP camps from Zeditaung, Oh Phauk and Sin Khone Daing villages in the hospital and I could not manage to provide medical treatment to all patients all by myself, the doctor added.

He said that he wanted authorities to temporarily assign a male nurse to the hospital because nearly 5000 IDPs from three camps relied on this hospital.

“We can’t close the hospital because IDPs have to rely on this hospital.  I do not want to abandon them. If I get one or two assistances, it will be a great help for us,” he said.

A local resident from Zeditaung village said that medical staff should be temporarily assigned to the hospital because transportation is a problem for villagers who want go to Buthidaung hospital.

The DMG contacted the Department of Health in Buthidaung Township for comment regarding lack of medical staff in the cottage hospital, an official of the department said that they understood the feeling of nurses and the department had made arrangements to be able to run the hospital smoothly although it was not easy to assign other medical staff to the hospital at the moment.

“I do not want to make any comment on the staff who returned home for security reasons because safety and security of our staff is the first priority. But, the doctor is in the hospital and we made some arrangements to facilitate daily operations of the hospital,” said Dr Than Tun Kyaw, deputy director of the Department of Medical Service in Buthidaung Township.

People from about 20 villages including Zeditaung mainly depend on the Zeditaung cottage hospital and there are about 100 in-patients a month while some of them have undergone surgery.