Status of radiological services in Addis Ababa public hospitals

The availability and quality of radiological service in the developing countries are generally poor. Ethiopia is one of the countries where overall health service has been compromised by inadequate & poorly maintained infrastructure and scarcity of health professionals. Radiological service is a resource intensive unit in a hospital and most developing countries radiological service is expected to be poor or may not be available at all. However, there is no study conducted to assess the radiological service in Ethiopia.

The aim of the study is to assess the status of radiological service in all public hospitals in Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia, and to render insight to the overall national service status.

A cross sectional survey was conducted from Aug 2008 to Oct 2009 G C in all twelve public hospitals in Addis Ababa, including specialized and military hospitals. Self administered pre-tested questioners were used to collect data from key informants, chief radiographers and radiologist. In addition, departmental daily work record book was used to extract the type of radiological examination performed Data analysis was done manually.

All hospitals in the study provide a basic level of radiological services. Plain x-ray and ultrasound is the type of service (100%) available, whereas services like mammography (9%), CT scan (18%) and MRI (0%) were found to be the least available. There are a total of 78 radiographers and 20 radiologists in Addis Ababa public hospitals with no radiologist in three. The average number of examinations performed in a year amounts to 113,204 and US and routine x-ray examinations account for nearly 98% of the service offered The study showed 25% of the radiological equipments are non-functional and no appropriately trained dark room technicians & no maintenance staffpresent in all hospitals

This study verifies the poor radiological infrastructure, poor level of support and the basic nature of the radiological service in the capital. We believe this finding can be used as an indirect indicator of the possible worse scenario in the regional and peripheral hospitals. Therefore a nation- wide survey & plannedgovernment intervention is recommended to improve the radiological service.