PMGH restoring services

By JINA AMBA
THE country’s biggest hospital is this week restoring all services it had to scale down at the height of the Coronavirus (Covid-19) surge, an official says.
Port Moresby General Hospital chief executive officer Dr Paki Molumi said all services should return to normal from Wednesday.
“The scale-down will end on (Nov) 17th. We are going to open up services especially the consultation clinic,” he said.
“Newly-diagnosed (cases) like cancer, diabetes or heart disease are the ones we are worried about.
“But patients we already know and been coming to our clinics. The pharmacies are open and the emergency department is open and they can get their prescriptions.
“As of next week, we want to open up especially the diabetic clinic, cardiac clinic and other specialised clinics.”
Dr Molumi said with the Covid-19 positivity rate going down to 54 per cent, the PMGH should be able to manage the Covid-19, and open up services for the other disease.
“We have a tent where we are doing rapid test and screen everyone coming into the hospital,” he said.
“Those tested positive we will do GeneXpert testing to confirm. Those who test negative will access the specialist clinics.”
Dr Moluymi said while the positivity rate at PMGH had decreased, Covid-19 cases in Central and Gulf had increased.
At the end of September, the positivity rate was 85 per cent. Last week, it went down to 54 per cent.
“But we have seen an increase in Central and Gulf. Central doesn’t have any hospital, so they are all coming to PMGH. Our staff need to step up again so that we could save those patients,” Dr Molumi said.
“Our team is working on how we are going to support Central and get their patients faster to our Covid-19 centre.”