Health Dept failed, inquiry highlights

 By ELIZABETH MIAE

THE Health Department’s plans to upgrade the Laloki Psychiatric Hospital outside Port Moresby to a specialist referral hospital face a major drawback.

The facility is not covered under the Public Hospital Act 1994. 

A parliamentary report on the inquiry into the hospital by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) last year found that the Health Department and past governments had known about this but failed to amend the act. 

The report said the hospital remained a part of the department and did not have a board of management for 12 years, no director of medical services for 12 years, no director of nursing for six years and no data  compiled for eight years. 

The purpose of reclassifying the hospital is to have it funded properly and managed independently. 

“Have you formerly asked the minister to recognise Laloki to be declared a specialist hospital?” committee chairman and Bogia MP John Hickey asked health secretary Pascoe Kase at yesterday’s PAC inquiry in Port Moresby.

Kase said it could only be declared a specialist hospital after it was upgraded.

Hickey said: ‘That won’t happen until you people rationalise the issues at the hospital and get the minister to bring it to the national government.

“You told us in 2010 that you were going to fix it and it’s now 2013.”

The report stated: “Laloki is the only psychiatric hospital in the country and serves a population of seven million people. 

“The facilities at Laloki are inadequate, decayed and unfit for use in many instances and the institution is a national disgrace.”