New Dialysis Machine for Buka

The Buka General Hospital will be receiving a dialysis machine worth K1.3 million.

This was announced by the Managing director of the National Fisheries Authority, John Kasu during a recent trip to the referral hospital.

He said NFA will facilitate for the equipment to be brought to the hospital during the course of the year.

A Dialysis machine is a machine used to filter a patient's blood to remove excess water and waste products when the kidneys are damaged, dysfunctional, or missing. The dialysis machine itself can be thought of as an artificial kidney.

NFA as part of its community service obligation donates both basic and very expensive medical equipment to referral hospitals throughout the country.  

“There are two components, one is looking at basic equipment, K2 Million worth of equipment is donated to four selected hospitals per year, that’s K500, 000 per hospital. The other component is for more expensive equipment,” said Mr Kasu.

Kasu said NFA believes in a healthy population “because if we are not healthy we cannot take charge of services.”

The Autonomous Bougainville’s Government, Health secretary, Clement Totavun, thanked NFA for the timely gesture. He said there is a need for the machine as the region is seeing a rise in lifestyle diseases including high blood pressure, heart diseases and diabetes.

“Currently there are four people in Bougainville that have gone through kidney transplant, and because of the complications that have developed as a result chronic diabetes that has affected their kidneys, they have had to go overseas for treatment.

“As far as the treatment and patient care is concerned, the ABG has put together a budget for the intensive care unit, which has been included in our 2018 budget, and we will be working with the hospital and other partners to be able to secure additional funding for us to build our intensive care unit,” Explained  Mr Totavun.

Legally the Buka general hospital is not recognised as the provinces referral hospital, that title still remains with the Arawa General hospital. However Secretary Totavun says the ABG is in the legal process of having that title transferred to the Buka General Hospital.

“We are going to declare this hospital as our provincial referral.”

 

Picture: An example of a dialysis machine (Picture courtesy of Colourbox)

Author: 
Meredith Kuusa
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