Nonga to get referrals

National, Normal
Source:

The National- Friday, January 14, 2011

 CONSULTATION clinics at Nonga Base General Hospital will reopen next month after being closed for a year.

In a statement, acting chief executive officer Dr John Maku highlighted the need to reopen all consultation services to properly screen patients for referral and medical attention.

Clinical diagnostic services at the hospital were not provided for the past year as part of scaling down process and rural centres were upgraded to some extent to capture continuous basic health services to the people.

However, it was brought into light that as part of scaling down process due to ash fall, deteriorating facilities, Nonga was experiencing problems with specialist doctors to conduct clinics and lack of transport to conduct outreach programmes.

Maku said that all consultation clinics played a big role in diagnosing any illness and this service would be reopened in early February once all nurses returned from holidays and a full roster would be scheduled.

He was impressed though with continual weekly visits to Butuwin health centre to attend to critical cases and consultation for patients.

He said St Mary’s Vunapope hospital was also providing consultation clinics because of the availability of specialists and once in a while surgeon’s from Vunapope travelled to Nonga upon requests which was inadequate for the population of Rabaul and parts of Gazelle.

Maku appealed for more dialogue among respective Boards of Nonga and Vunapope to provide more clinics every week to the public.

While some specialist services were still maintained, he called for rural health posts to be properly resourced to meet demands of patients given the scaling down of services at the hospital.