Farouk Ksentini describes health situation in Algeria as “catastrophic”

Farouk Ksentini, head of the National Advisoty Commission for the promotion and protection of human rights, has made a close perusal of the latest exhaustive report on the situation of the Algerian hospitals and the health sector in general.

• He will hand over the report , early next week, to  president Bouteflika after an inspecting tour that was led by some members of the committee to more than 150 medical institutions, since last year, and resulted in the registration of several shortcomings in terms of medical equipment, that negatively impacted on the Algerian health care system.
• The inspection campaign by the Ministry of Health which was launched to assess the level of hygiene and sterilization reached its third phase which consists of controlling more than 35 central inspectors in the hospitals of the eastern regions.
• “The situation of the Algerian health institutions is bad. Inspections by members of the committee to more than 150 hospitals revealed that most of health institutions’ buildings are old because they were built in the colonial period and most of them were military barracks or an administration, that’s why they do not look like health institutions which must constructed according to the treatment and health functions of the hospitals. We also remarked the luck of sterilization of the pre-construction engineering. The report referred to the perceived lack of the medical equipment, maintenance and follow-up and this negatively impacted on the health services in Algeria,” he said.