Simbu Children Foundation should be praised

THOSE who have travelled overseas for medical treatment because the service or equipment they need is not available locally are proof of the need to have those services in the country.
Sourcing funds for overseas medical trips is beyond the reach of most people. Yet, over the years, families have been farewelling loved ones who have been victims of our country’s ill-equipped hospitals.
But for the eight million or so people of PNG, there is little choice but to rely on our strained and struggling healthcare system.
Today, we can only reflect on what life would be today had our hospitals been well equipped and resourced.
Only those with money are finding a way out.
Fingers from Parliament point to the hospitals’ ill-equipped state and extend the blame to the requirement by privately owned and run hospitals that patients pay first before treatment.
Time and again we have argued and debated that we have all the money in the world to have world-class hospitals, yet we don’t have them.
When we do try to upgrade our facilities, we are faced with obstacles such as uncompleted projects, budget overruns and the lot which derails the project completion.
All these become part of what is really lacking in our major referral hospitals, which are inundated with maladministration and mismanagement by the respective hospital boards, lack of motivation, care, pride and the under-resourcing of health workers and healthcare system.
News out from the Sir Joseph Nombri Hospital in Chimbu on its recently acquired medical equipment – CT and MRI scanners – is positive.
The hospital board and it partner, the Simbu Children’s Foundation (SFC), should be praised for the initiative taken.
The SCF teams source medical equipment and other items for the hospital.
It has built a database of Simbu professionals who donate their expertise free of charge to the hospital.
The hospital recently called a biomedical engineer to go up and fix their medical equipment.
When he attended to the paediatric ward’s equipment, he provided the service for free and advised the hospital management that it was his service to Chimbu as a SCF volunteer.
That is so heart-warming and special.
SCF recently funded the first couple of week’s special dietary requirements and IV packs for osteomyelitis patients at the hospital.
SCF funds the special dietary requirements for children attending the ‘Prevention of Parent to Child Transmission of HIV’ clinic there.
SCF also covers the cost of return bus fares for mothers to travel from their village to Kundiawa town for their hospital appointments.
That is a partnership that is working and should be encouraged.
In fact, what SCF is doing with the Sir Joseph Nombri Hospital is a model that all provinces should follow.