BY JARED KOLI
A petition for the Prime Minister to call for a Commission of Enquiry (COE) into the medical and health service provided at the National Referral Hospital (NRH) is still open for signatures.
Local civil society advocator and NRH Patient, Ishmael Nori, yesterday informed Island Sun that some wards are yet to be visited in search of signatories.
Mr Nori said most of the patients at the surgical ward have already signed the petition forms. Two volunteers will continue distributing the petition forms to other wards within the hospital.
Nori, who has been hospitalised over the past months, hopes every ward should be completed by Friday this week.
“We are planning to go into every ward, introduce the petition and invite signatories from patients although some of them have already aware of it,” he said in a phone interview yesterday.
He said he could not stand on his own to carry out the exercise due to his medical condition, but had engaged two of his colleagues to continue collecting signatories yesterday.
The public are also invited to throw in their support for this worthy cause, this paper was told.
“After this we will compile all the signatories and see where we can go from here to present this to the Prime Minister. We are looking at presenting the signatories to the prime minister through a Member of Parliament (MP) who will act as our Ambassador.
“We want to see the recommendations set in the 2009 and 2015 Special Select Committee report into the Quality of Medical Services provided at NRH fully implemented, more on the development aspects of NRH,” Nori earlier said.
He said people and ordinary citizens of this country deserve a St Vincent-like quality hospital service provided at the NRH.
“I have observed that for many people, there is nothing much to do for them here, if we can have services that are accessed by our Ministers or Members of Parliament at St Vincent hospital here during the early stages of their sick, that could prevent deaths and save lives here,” he adds.
Nori also questions how the government prioritises health workers, doctors, nurses and technical staff on specialised trainings.
“What we want the government to do is to proritise to save lives same as the quality of service at its sister hospital, St Vincent hospital in Sydney, Australia,” Nori said.
The petition was supported by Forum Solomon Islands International (FSII) and Young Women Parliamentary Group (YWPG) who on Friday last week met the Chair of the Parliamentary Health and Medical Services Committee, Charles Sigoto to push the 2009 report to the floor of parliament.
“Since the report was released, not even a Member of Parliament (MP) stood up to champion the document to parliament, and we want Mr Sigoto as Chair to move the report to the floor of parliament, Said FSII Chair, Wilfred Luiramo.
“The Chair has agreed with us to have the report to be tabled in parliament, in parallel with the hospital petition calling on Prime Minister to call for a Commission of Enquiry (COE) into service provided at NRH,” he adds.
Mr Sigoto could not be reached when Island Sun called over the weekend, however, Mr Luiramo said there is “green light” shown.
FSII and YWPG believes that the recommendations set in the report were not fully implemented, although some recommendations were addressed.
