Two of the three main operating theatres in the Solomon Islands National Referral hospital condemned in December last year have finally been cleared to reopen.
Transcript
Two of the three main operating theatres in the Solomon Islands National Referral hospital condemned in December last year have finally been cleared to reopen.
For the past five months the country's main hospital has been prioritising emergency surgery ahead of elective and non-life threatening procedures.
The hospital's chief executive says inspectors from the Ministry of Infrastructure gave the two theatres the all clear on Wednesday last week and he expects them to be officially commissioned and back in operation this week.
Dr Aumanu spoke with Koroi Hawkins who began by asking him why the renovations took so long to complete.
STEVE AUMANU: Well the first important thing that underpins the whole work is the standards. The standard overview of the operating theatres needs to be satisfied. It is very, it is highly specialised so that becomes a paramount thing that we need to achieve and the ministry of health and the hospital is fully aware of this and the processes that need to be in place government processes to achieve that standard is the first thing and that obviously has taken time. To also comply with the human process that is in place by the government. So that is one of the areas that caused the delays as well. The actually job when we actually do the tendering process and finally selected a contractor. Then one of the delays was the requirement to have specialist tiles, floor tiles for theatres which we were unable to procure here. So it took us almost five weeks to procure them and courier the supplies from Australia. That also delayed the completion work for the theatres.
KOROI HAWKINS: Is there a backlog of cases now you will be working on to clear or how will the theatres come into the current operations of the hospital?
SA: There is obviously some back log here in Honiara but during the course of the closure the surgical teams and the anesthetic teams have been doing an outreach. They have been going to Kilufi. They did some work also in Gizo and of course there are other visiting surgical teams in the country. As I speak now there is one in Marovo so there has been work done in the other hospitals that continue to be done in the provincial hospitals but at the hospital here there are some back log of cases here as well.
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