Health personnel on placement in rural areas are not on duty 24 hours as they don’t have anywhere to stay near their place of work.
Executive Director of Rede Feto Dinorah Granadeiro said the government had posted health personnel to rural areas, including administrative posts and sukus (villages), but the level of medical assistance was not effective due to poor conditions and a lack of proper equipment.
“Clinical service in rural areas is not working 24 hours, they are working until 5pm because they have nowhere to stay,” she said.
Because there is no accommodation provided staff must return to their homes and these are usually located a long distance from the health posts.
Granadeiro said when a patient needed urgent assistance the family just called medical staff to attend the health centre, but this was a risk particularly to pregnant women.
In 2010, the government through placed medical personnel in rural health centres and health posts across Timor, with the aim of bringing health assistance closer to the community.
However, other problems they faced included a lack of transportation, clean water, equipment and medication to treat patients.
Granadeiro said she was also concerned with the work performance of health personnel as many used bad language towards women.
She said the government had implemented a number of outreach programs such as Integrated Community Health Services (SISCA) and home visits, but these were not working effectively due to a lack of human resources.
In response to the concerns raised, Health Minister Maria do Ceu Sarmento said although under the regulations health staff should be on duty 24 hours, it was difficult due to the conditions they faced.
“There is no place to stay and no toilets, clearly they cannot work for 24 hours. I cannot say they must endure this, it is impossible because it can affect their life,” she said.
Every year the parliament allocates more than $500,000 through the Ministry of State Administration budget for Municipality Infrastructure Development Projects (PDIM).
Therefore, Sarmento said it was the municipality administrator’s rather than the ministry’s responsibility to decide how the funds were prioritized.
“They will prioritize, therefore we cannot decide to provide the infrastructure (accommodation and clean water) for doctors,” she said.
While the SISCA program had not been well implemented due to a lack of human resources and transport, she said the home visit program was working more effectively as doctors visited families directly.
Through this program, she said the health personnel were able to identify diseases early, as well as assess women’s health status and family conditions, so that the government could do intervene to address the issue immediately.
Since the program was launched in January, 60% of families in Timor have been visited by health personnel. The results from this, including the general health status of families and disease rates in the community, would be announced by the end of the year.
