January – December 2021 Report of Activities & 2022 Operational Plan

The year 2021 has confirmed trends like 2020 in terms of admissions and outpatients. This despite the 2 relevant COVID19 waves occurred in January, July and a smaller one caused by the Omicron variant in December, confirms that the hospital has managed to maintain all essential services and other outpatients services more active throughout the year.

During the periods of complete lockdown which occurred especially in January five cardiac patients, who could not travel and who are on monthly follow-up under the cardiologic programme (“Operation Heart”) were assisted through direct home visits done monthly by a mobile hospital team and if needed more often (covering distances as far as 80 Km within the rural areas).

The challenges of the pandemic added difficulties to the already existing ones for the general population and hospital service delivery, characterized by the hard economic crisis, and this contributes to challenges in retention of treatment for chronic patients and late presentations. The overall hospital death rate worsened (6,1% in 2021 from 4.3% of the previous two years) mainly caused by COVID19 which has been the major cause of death during this year.