BY SAMIE WAIKORI
SUPERVISING Director of Malaita provincial health, Dr David Danitofea recently advised for close synergy with health authority when building health facilities.
The call was made following positive development where donors and communities continue to build health facilities or clinics in the province.
He said the provincial health and Ministry of Health and Medical Services (MHMS) understand the need to build more health facilities in the province.
“Our growing population is an indicator for that and the MHMS is grateful to donors and communities for taking up the initiative,” Danitofea said.
However, he explained that the MHMS has its own indicators to which clinics should be built depending on areas such as; given population requesting clinic, distance from clinic to clinic and etc…
The doctor commented on Tatali mini-hospital in East Malaita as an example on when health facilities are built without the consent of health authority.
He said work on the so-called mini hospital has started under a funding arrangement from the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Danitofea furthered that the first thing to know was there is no term under the language used by MHMS as; mini hospital.
He said the MHMS only uses Area Health Center 1 and 2, provincial and national referral hospitals.
Danitofea said although these terms might not just mean anything it needs to put right according to the language used by the MHMS.
However, he said it was fortunate that the MHMS has took on board the health facility.
Danitofea added that apart from building health facilities, there are areas like registration and posting of health workers to the facility will only be done by the authority.
He said this is the very reason that although health authority doesn’t have budget to build new health facilities, the operation of the facility depends on them.
The supervising Director however thanked donors, the PCDF program and communities for supporting the MHMS to build clinics in the province.
