All services to resume

By LULU MARK
ALL the services that were scaled down at the Port Moresby General Hospital three weeks ago will resume on Thursday, chief executive officer Dr Paki Molumi says.
The country’s largest and only referral hospital announced scaled-down services for two weeks on July 20 to allow the hospital to be thoroughly cleaned after five staff members of the Central Public Health Laboratory (CPHL) located within the hospital and a diseased woman were tested positive for the Covid-19 the previous week.
Dr Molumi said services would return to normal but all patients, guardians and anyone visiting the hospital must wear mask and adhere to the Covid-19 prevention measures.
He said this was mandatory.
The services that were scaled down included general non-emergency outpatient, pathology services, elective surgeries, consultation clinic (no more than 15 patient per clinic) and dental services.
“The scale-down was only for non-essential services like elective surgeries and non-specialist consultation clinics like skin clinic,” Dr Molumi said.
“All other services were maintained and run normally during that period.”
He had said earlier that the hospital would not continue to scale down its services or even shut down because there was no other big hospital in the city.
Meanwhile, when asked about a 14-month-old baby girl reported to have died after being turned away by the guards at the hospital, Dr Molumi said all the essential services were operational throughout and no one was turned away.
He said the hospital and security firm were conducting an investigation into the matter.