Popondetta General Hospital

Popondetta General Hospital mortuary full

Chief Executive Officer Dr Gunzee Gawin told Loop PNG that the hospital mortuary will only cater for 12 bodies.

“Right now, we have more than 20 bodies in the mortuary. Some were unclaimed bodies from last year.”

However, he thanked the Swire Shipping for providing a 30ft container for the hospital to use and place some bodies in.

Dr Gawin said a mass burial will be made for the deceased either this weekend or next Monday.

Popondetta hospital in dire need of blood donors

This is because the current stocks are ‘tied’ to patients.

The Popondetta hospital requires a huge volume of blood but unfortunately this is not the case at the moment.  Each time a patient requires blood transfusion  it is usually family members who donate.

 John Morris, the blood bank attendant said: “There have been cases where patients needing blood transfusion would wait days until relatives turned up.”

 “We only get one or two volunteer donors in a week if we are lucky. Most of the time the donations are tied to patients”