BY LYNTON AARON FILIA
HANDLING of patients at the national referral hospital is very poor, it is reported.
A paediatric doctor from Taiwan successfully completing his one-month volunteer work at NRH reveals this.
Dr Wang said, “Working at paediatric emergency, I was astonished by its over-crowded condition, which I used to think it will only be happened in an over-crowded country such as my homeland Taiwan.”
There is no fixed paediatrician in emergency, only registrar, and this lack of service costs patients several hours to have proper diagnosis and managements.
He said poor availability of imaging and medications makes things worse.
Dr Wang is shocked to see medical staff not wearing facial masks during contact with tuberculosis patients.
And, all these patients are mixed up with others without any direct-contact preventing managements.
“Owing to the scarcity of medical practitioners here, every one of them are very important and it will cause tremendous stress on medication system if any of them gets sick.
“While at special care nursery, I performed a lumbar puncture for a neonate who was suspected to have meningitis due to congenital syphilis.”
Deployment of Taiwanese doctors and specialists to Solomon Islands is an arrangement by SIG and Taiwan’s Government in collaboration with Taiwan Health Centre.
Wang suggests if the Taiwan Embassy and SIG could fund N95 facial masks for medical staff.
Meanwhile, the programme of Taiwan sending doctors and specialist to Solomon Islands has two months left.
With that, Taiwan Health Centre Nurse in Charge, Ms Alice Hsu said they are working on ways to extend the programme as it is an agreement between Taiwan Government and SIG.
