NO HOSPITAL RECORDS FOR ALBINOS IN KIAMBU

Good patients records are crucial to safety and quality care but in a Kiambu district hospital, the records office is yet to receive a government audit tool for generic record-keeping for the albinos the officer in charge has revealed.

Speaking to KNA, the records officer in the Kiambu district hospital Mrs Margaret Waweru expressed concerns on the lack of government tools necessary to compile and capture records of the albinos visiting the hospital. She explained that the tools currently being used in the hospital has no section to indicate where the details of the albinos could be recorded and thus the hospital has no records of any of them.

It is disheartening to note that Mrs Waweru had observed that in her two years stay serving at the records office she had never seen an albino visit the hospital for any reason whatsoever. She added that records from both in patients and outpatients, records from the wards showed that there was no any data captured for albinos in the district hospital. Whether albinos ever go to hospitals or not could only be ascertained by the records but unfortunately there is not any.

As a matter of fact it should be noted that medical records are at the heart of good patient care and a essential component of understanding clinical note-keeping. Thus the patients complete medical record should be available at all times every time they visit the hospital. Also, data recorded or communicated on admission, handover and discharge should be recorded using standardized proforma.

In a planned project organized by the department of gender and social services, the albinos in the area are to receive aid to help them counter the harsh weather conditions. This will include creams, caps and sunglasses. However, acquiring the right record for the number of albinos may prove quiet challenging with the lacking records and data for the albinos.

As a result of that the government has been urged to introduce a government audit tool that would enable easy tabulation record-keeping for the albinos. This would even help the government when carrying out census and statistics on population for marginalized groups like albinos in the country.