Partnership the way to go: CEO

By LULU MARK
PARTNERSHIP is the way forward in delivering specialist healthcare services to the people, says Port Moresby General Hospital chief executive officer Dr Paki Molumi.
Dr Molumi said this at the launching on Tuesday of the Roger Hau’ofa Kidney Foundation “Shave 4 Kidneys” awareness and fundraising event which aims to raise K200,000 for the hospital’s kidney unit.
The National Fisheries Authority (NFA) is expected to fund a dialysis unit to be set up at the hospital.
“Dialysis involves hooking up a person’s life to a machine which has to be sustained,” he said.
“The cost of consumables are high and it is an exercise that will eat up the resources.
“The solution is to provide kidney transplant services in PNG.”
Dr Molumi said satellite dialysis centres would be set up around the country.
Patients will only be referred to Port Moresby for transplant operations.
PMGH is a specialist teaching hospital and there were doctors and nurses ready to be trained, Dr Molumi said.
It, therefore, needs partnership with non-government and corporate organisations, such as PMGH’s partnership with Roger Hau’ofa Kidney Foundation.
“Twenty years ago, we were looking at communicable diseases with few cases of non-communicable diseases such as kidney disease, heart disease and cancer,” Dr Molumi said.
“But today, it is completely the other way around.
“PMGH is not able to provide specilised services because we are doing both primary and secondary care and our resources have been diluted.
So we are trying to address this existing diseases and there’ a new lot of diseases coming up.”