ENB’s Nonga hospital needs new cancer ward

By JUNIOR UKAHA
THE Nonga General Hospital (NGH) in East New Britain needs a ward for its cancer patients, a doctor says.
Dr Manna Ario, a physician at the hospital, told a cancer workshop on Friday that the small chemotherapy room operated in the hospital was inadequate for the number of patients seen by the hospital.
Nonga was the referral hospital for smaller hospitals in the New Guinea Islands (NGI) region.
Ario, with extensive experience working with cancer patients having worked at the Cancer Treatment Centre in Lae, said the hospital still needed a proper cancer ward for its patients.
“We need a proper chemo (chemotherapy) ward on its own for us to use,” Ario said.
“At the moment this little chemo ward that we are using is not conducive and doesn’t meet the standard.
“In here we do not really have a proper chemo set up. From my experience in Lae with Dr (John) Niblett and the cancer unit, I have some protocol that I can give. “I also have a nurse who assists me out and who has experience in this area.”
Ario was responding to Port Moresby General Hospital oncologist Dr Peter Olali, who wanted to know how doctors at NGH applied chemotherapeutic treatment on their cancer patients.
“Those (cancer patients) who come to Port Moresby, I tell them that as long as there’s somebody in Nonga or any other hospital for that matter who can administer the chemotherapy, I can supply them all the drugs,” Olali said.
“I supply the drugs as well as all the drug sheets and they come with it.
“In here, if you are able to administer the chemotherapy, then that makes it easy for us. They come to Port Moresby, we diagnose them, start the first chemo and send them with all the packages for the next five months.
NGH also need two or three more specialist cancer nurses to assist doctors to administer medicines.