Chrispin Inambao
WINDHOEK – Floors at the Katutura Referral Hospital were gleaming, patients’ benches shiny and a breath of fresh, scented air permeated its corridors in the wake of Friday’s nationwide clean-up campaign.
Roads, schools, clinics, hospitals, open-spaces at villages, towns and cities were swept clean in the largest clean-up campaign that involved President Hage Geingob, ministers, teachers, doctors, students, government officials and others who swapped their ties and suits for overalls as they cleaned the country.
When New Era visited the hospital on Friday morning it found hospital staff and Iranian Ambassador to Namibia, Dr Seyed Vahid Karimi and the hospital superintendent Dr Fady Ashmawy planting a bouquet of flowers in blossom and there was a bee-hive of cleaning activities as its floors were swept and mopped.
“Cleaning and cleanliness is part of the faith. God is beautiful and he loves beauty, so the area in which we live we have to make it clean and beautiful and this habit of cleaning should be perpetual and it should be done everyday, every week and every month,” intoned the highly religious Iranian ambassador who was accompanied by his wife Nagres Karimi who was resplendent in a black Islamic religious gown.
Karimi stressed the importance of flowers saying the good and beauty of flowers is needed for patients to enjoy a good and friendly environment and he was also taken aback by the cleanliness of the hospital.
Dr Ashmawy who was proud about the cleanliness and the freshness of the air permeating the hospital’s corridors praised Geingob for leading the campaign.
He said people from different sectors such as government officials, doctors, teachers, school children, politicians and others had responded positively and participated in Friday’s clean-up.
Before Dr Ashmawy and other health volunteers shifted their focus on Katutura Referral Hospital they cleaned their head-office that also looked spotless.
Even the incinerator for medical waste where placentas, discarded blood, sharps, unwanted microbiological cultures and stocks and body parts from amputations are incinerated at very high temperatures was also very clean with no flies in site.
He said Friday’s clean-up campaign was voluntary but that many nurses, doctors, cleaners and other auxiliary staff took their free time and participated.
The medical superintendent also spoke about the garbage that was removed from the nursery at the hospital that has been lying idle for years but will now be planted with flowers that will be given to patients.
A swing will also be installed within the bounds of the nursery so that child patients from its paediatric ward could enjoy its peace and serenity, said the Egyptian.
Friday’s voluntary clean-up will go a long way to restore the hospital’s cleanliness that has over the years been in the spotlight as having slid downhill.