North Fly District’s Rumginae hospital staff received rations from the Ok Tedi Development Foundation (OTDF) recently.
Rumginae, a church-run health facility in the North Fly district expressed their gratitude to the Foundation for donating food to feed impatients on 29 September comprising of 30 rice bags, containers of cooking oil, boxes of tinned fish and cartons of noodles.
Amono Asipali Secretary of the Evangelical Church of PNG (ECPNG) Church Health Services for North Fly thanked Ok Tedi Development Foundation (OTDF) for the food donation.
He stressed on how the partnership would strengthen support by development partners in the province towards church organizations.
“On behalf of ECPNG Health Services, I thank OTDF as this is one area of concern at present. We can treat our patients but we are unable to feed them. Many church-run health facilities have been struggling due to huge budget cuts and Rumginae is no exception, but to have such support coming through is very helpful,” Mr Asipali said.
Rumginae Hospital Medical Officer, Dr Kevin Pondikou said that the hospital has seen an increase in patients from 20-60 a day after the temporary closure of the Kiunga hospital adding also that Rumginae have a feeding capacity to no more than 20 patients as facility could only provide a kilo of rice and a small tin of fish per week.
Dr Pondikou said the hospital can cater for 60 patients but feed only half the number and stressed that they try to keep patients who need close medical attention at present.
On average, the hospital received 10,000 patients in a year and from this total, 1000 are patients who stay in the hospital for a number of weeks depending on the state of their medical conditions.
Despite being fully staffed and adequately equipped with medical supplies, the sad reality was keeping patients fed due to insufficient funds.
OTDF Executive Manager Program Services, Eric Kuman said OTDF saw the hospital’s need through an alert from the FAO (PNG) Office and responded with donations but because a staff member of OTDF was taken care of by Rumginae District Health Centre due to Kiunga hospital’s temporary closure
The Evangelical Church of PNG manages the hospital with its medical supplies provided by the Department of Health.