Midwives overworked at Zambian hospital

The immense workload is due to a shortage of staff at the University Teaching Hospital (UTH) in Lusaka.

But hospital officials have also put it down to expectant mothers flocking to the hospital, rather than using the maternity wings at clinics in the community.

The public relations manager, Pauline Mbangweta, said midwives at the hospital’s maternity ward are overwhelmed.

She said that mothers to be are choosing the hospital over the local clinics because ‘they say here, they are guaranteed of being attended to by a doctor’.

Ms Mbangweta has now urged mothers to deliver at their nearest clinic, to ease the burden on the few midwives at UTH.

The hospital is short of midwives because many health professionals have left the country to work abroad.

This has forced the hospital to ask retired staff to return to work part-time in order to cope with demand. 

Now the hospital is set to train general nurses in midwifery in the hope of alleviating the pressure on midwives.

The hospital recently came under scrutiny after a newborn baby died and was recorded as having two different identities, forcing the mother to insist in the DNA test.

Officials said that one of the identity tags mistakenly had the name of the doctor who attended, and claimed this was due to fatigued, overworked staff.