Minister of Health Honorable Nkaku Kabi responded to the announcement of T’sepong Hospital in Maseru yesterday, that starting from the 1st November 2018, they are going to close private wards at Queen ‘Mamohato Hospital.

Honorable Kabi said the Government of Lesotho has a contract with T’sepong Hospital, which guides them in providing health services to patients, and that from the beginning T’sepong has not been operating according to the terms of that contract.

He explained that Queen ‘Mamohato Hospital has public wards which are run by the Government of Lesotho, and private wards which are run by T’sepong, although T’sepong has been avoiding to use them.

“We are still in negotiations with them to stop them from closing private wards.Our agreement provides that they run public wards which are paid for by the government and also run private wards which they take full responsibility on them.” Honorable Kabi stated.

Honorable Kabi further indicated that T’sepong expresses that from the 1st November 2018, they are going to stop processing transfers of patients to Bloemfontein, and said according to the contract there are some referrals T’sepong cannot ignore.

“We have another agreement with them which I may call ‘gentlemen’s agreement’, in which they carried out referrals of patients to Bloemfontein on our behalf, and we paid them transport and logistics costs for doing that.” He said.

“So if they now say they want to stop carrying out referrals on our behalf, this means they are going to dump those people who have been helping us.” He said.

“Arrangements are completed and we are ready to work with those people when T’sepong dumps them on the 1st November 2018.”He concluded.