Staff to pick up drugs in Kokopo

NAMATANAI health workers in New Ireland will be travelling to Kokopo, East New Britain, to pick up medical supplies, an official says.
District health manager Edward Maika said they were faced with shortage of medicines like Kavieng Hospital and they needed new supplies. “We will go to the medical store in Kokopo via a speed boat and get the common antibiotics and basic medical supplies such as Panadol, amoxicillin and other commonly used drugs to help the people,” he said.
Maika said the supplies came in quarterly from the medical store in Kokopo and Kavieng and now with Kavieng running out of medical supplies, they had to go to Kokopo by next week to get the new supplies.
He said two systems were used to access medical supplies, they were the pull and push.
The pull was when the district level requested supplies from the Government and the push was when the Government brought supplies to rural hospital.
Maika said they had facilities issues as well but they managed with whatever resources they had to keep the services going.
He said all health centres received their supplies based on their own schedules.
Maika thanked the district administration and the local MP for the new solar energy installed two months ago which had helped them with the clinical activities after relaying on generator power for the last 15 years.