Hospital facelift under 3yr plan

LALOKI Psychiatric Hospital outside Port Moresby will get a major infrastructure and medical services facelift through a three-year Project Implementation Plan (PIP) starting next year, a Health Department official says.
Department executive manager standard division and chief medical officer Dr Gua Tau, who reiterated Health Minister Sir Puka Temu’s announcement three weeks ago, told The National on Tuesday that the hospital PIP project would be put in the budget this year.
Tau said since Laloki was the only specialist hospital for psychiatric patients in the country, its facilities would be improved to ensure quality patient care is provided for the mentally-ill patients.
“The infrastructural part of the three-year PIP for Laloki includes specialised wards and facilities, staff housing and general hospital infrastructure,” Tau said.
“The PIP scope also includes the mapping of the hospital area and the boundary for so that essential clinical and rehabilitation services would be established for quality patient care which has not been the case over the years because of deteriorating infrastructure and the chronic water woe that the hospital had been facing.
“Work will start as soon as we put it into budget, but as the minister has said, we are treating the three-year Laloki PIP as a matter of urgency because of the special ‘mind rehabilitation’ care that is given and the fact being that it is the only mental care hospital in PNG.”
Hospital social worker Moses Pingina, in acknowledging the news, said that it was timely that Health Department has recognised the need for improved facilities and services in the hospital.
“Human mind is the engine room for an effective functioning of a person, which for the case of those that have deteriorated due to illicit substance abuses and from unacceptable stresses, needs to be brought back to normal way of thinking,” he said.
Pingina said quick mind rehabilitation would occur if the environment was conducive to apply the clinical and outside rehabilitation services on the patients.