Taiwan provides continuous support for National Referral Hospital

BY LORETTA BRIGIDIA MANELE

Taiwan provides continuous support for National Referral Hospital

TAIWAN continues to support Solomon Islands National Referral Hospital’s (NRH) dengue laboratory.

According to the Taiwan Health Center (THC) in Honiara, through its partnership with Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital (KMUH) in Taiwan, Dr. Ruby Tsai, Jih-Jin, who is the Director of the Tropical Medicine Center (TMC) at KMUH, led a dengue expert team to Solomon Islands in early September.

She held a conference regarding innovative strategies for mosquito borne diseases.

The team also carried out inspection in the dengue laboratory and provided practical improvement guideline and suggestions.

On top of that, a donation of new diagnostic tools worth SBD 130,000 was also made by the team to the hospital for the purpose of more rapid accurate identification of mosquito borne diseases.

One of their members, Bo-Yi Huang, a medical technician at KMUH’s Tropical Medicine Center spent the month working with staff at the lab where he taught them how to use the new tools.

Travelling to Solomon Islands for the first time, his work at NRH’s dengue lab included examining the lab and making sure that the quality and exact standard of operation procedure for testing including PCR and ELISA was carried out.

Taiwan Health Centre expressed that through the practice of traditional and updated methods, local medical technicians will be well equipped with skills to prepare for the future challenges of any possible dengue outbreak.

“The precise diagnosis could offer the proper clinical management and thus, reduce the severity and mortality of dengue fever”, said THC.

Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs have recently dispatched another scale-up support for maintenance and renovation of the dengue laboratory with a total value of SBD 450,000.

“Both Taiwan government and KMUH paid efforts for strengthening the function of this dengue laboratory to maximize the practical help for the patients in Solomon Islands”, said THC.

The NRH dengue laboratory was established after the country’s first big dengue outbreak in 2013.

It was designed by KMUH’s Tropical Medicine Center under Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) grant support.

The dengue laboratory was donated to NRH in 2014 and has been supported technically by KMUH.

Since then, Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital, located in Southern Taiwan has persisted in providing maintenance, quality assurance and updated diagnostic techniques to NRH’s dengue laboratory.

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