Twenty specialist medical doctors and surgeons are performing operations on patients only once a week due to lack of space at the Kundiawa General Hospital’s Operating theatre.
The hospital’s CEO Mathew Kaluvia indicated this recently when he said 12 Senior Medical Officers and eight surgeons at the hospital were schedule to perform in the respective disciplines at the operating theatre once a week due to the lack of spaces.
The current operating theatres, intensive care units and wards were built by the Japanese Government as a gift to the people of Chimbu in 1994 when the hospital served a smaller population within the province.
The facility has now become one of the major referral public hospitals in the region and serves the whole Highlands Region as well as several coastal provinces and the extractive mining project areas.
It has 33 doctors - 20 of which are senior specialist medical doctors, senior medical doctors and surgeons - making it one of the leading hospitals in the country equipped with so many doctors.
However, the vital services of those specialist doctors, some of which are internationally renowned, is not being fully utilised due to lack of spaces at the hospital’s three operating theatres.
The doctors in the various discipline like Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Dental, Ear Nose and Throat, and bone and others are scheduled to use the operating theatres once week.
The hospital is the leading outside of Port Moresby and Lae in terms of training doctors’ residency attracted by the large number of specialists there.
It has recently struck a deal with a Polish hospital in which physiotherapy exchanges are being done. Specialists’ doctors in Poland also come and perform the only knee and hip surgeries in the country.
Kundiawa also has the only specialist who performs fistula operations for mothers in the country.
A fundraiser is being carried out to build a bigger operating theatre and other vital sections to fully utilise the doctors while stopping patients from queuing up.
Picture: Hospital CEO Kaluvia on the right with specialist doctors checking out new medical equipment recently.