Last week we read much about the NRH and some of the problems the hospital faced and steps being taken to help mitigate and try to resolve some of the reported concerns.
Let us just consider a while the ongoing Covid-19 crisis in Fiji today.
Radio New Zealand has reported today, Friday, the staff and patients at the Colonial WarMemorialHospital in Suva had no food fora while.
Meanwhile theFiji health authorities yesterday announced another record high daily infections update with 431 new confirmed cases of the virus and two deaths in the 24 hours until 8am on Thursday.
RNZ Pacific spoke to staff and patients at the hospital who said there were no meals for most of the day across the 500-bed hospital.
When asked if it was true that staff and patients did not get meals, Fiji's health secretary Dr James Fong said "yes, the kitchen reopened at 11am after a decontamination process".
It is understood that two staff in the hospital kitchen tested positive on Wednesday night and the kitchen could not operate to serve breakfast and lunch hour meals.
Fiji's public health infrastructure in its central eastern division has struggled to cope under the weight of increasing cases after a cluster began at the hospital at the start of June.
Viti Levu, the main island is home to approximately 600,000 people, over half of whom live in the central eastern division where the current delta variant outbreak is concentrated.
Maternity services strained
Over the weekend, June (surname withheld), a young Suva mother, took to social media to air frustration at the conditions and delays over food services at the Makoi Maternity Hospital in Nasinu where covid positive moms and infants are being isolated.
June said the two of them were discharged from CWMH two weeks after the outbreak was detected there.
Several days after being at home, her newborn developed a fever. Following a visit to the local maternal child health clinic, the two of them were taken to CWMH before eventually being transferred to the Makoi Maternity Hospital where they've stayed since.
"Staying here is not easy. All I do is cry because I just gave birth and all I want to do is be at home and have someone take care of me and my baby," she said.
"I'm in pain every day because my stitch hurts and every cough triggers it. I never had this cough until I got here. We don't eat well, we don't sleep well. I wake up in the middle of the night and I look to the other bed and there's another mom sitting up trying to put a baby to sleep and falling off to sleep halfway.
"All you hear at night is them asking their babies to sleep because these mothers are symptomatic as well. There's no medication and there's no treatment for us, you know, at least antibiotics or something," June said.
"I'm lucky I had uploaded that video because now I have people reaching out wanting to donate stuff. We're hungry. We're tired. We wash our clothes here and there's no hot water and with the c-section you know you can’t bath in cold water but we have to compromise, we wash our clothes with cold water we bath our babies with cold water."
After June posted on social media that the covid positive mothers in her ward were still waiting for breakfast at 2.30pm, members of the public responded, and the International Women's Association bought laundry machines and provided supplies for patients at the hospital.
Dr Fong admitted the Makoi Maternity facility was overcrowded and told the press on Wednesday night that transportation had become an issue as government drivers too were vulnerable.
"We have deployed some more tents outside and we've actually put more beds in the clinic area. We have got a few teams on site that will help us to create that space. As regards to the mobilisation of meals, we did have trouble with some of the transport as you know that one of the people who are vulnerable to the virus is our drivers. Because they drive all over the place they are very vulnerable to exposure. So we end up with no drivers for sometimes, which means that sometimes the meals are delayed in its transportation."
Dr Fong said the Ministry of Health had reassigned drivers to come in from other parts of the ministry to support the delivery of food and support to patients who are accommodated outside of CWMH.
Meanwhile staff on shift at the hospital who are accommodated at motels in the central business district are also being catered for by the CWMH kitchen.
In separate news, a new daily record number of Covid-19 cases have been announced in Fiji as Permanent Secretary for Health, James Fong confirms there are 431 cases and two deaths related to Covid-19 in the last 24 hours.
Dr Fong said these new cases are from the Central and Western Divisions.
He said steady increase in average daily case numbers in combination with other indicators suggest higher daily numbers of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in the coming weeks, particularly in the Central and Western divisions.
There are now 24 deaths due to Covid-19 in Fiji, with 22 of these deaths during the outbreak that started in April this year.
A full breakdown of areas of interest has been published online on the Ministry's Covid-19 dashboard.
The Permanent Secretary said the seven-day average of new cases per day, has increased to 285 cases per day or 305 cases per million population per day.
"There has also been a notable increase in positive patients with severe disease, as well as an increase in deaths."
"The steady increase in average daily case numbers in combination with other indicators suggest higher daily numbers of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in the coming weeks, particularly in the Central and Western divisions," he said.
The Health Ministry has also recorded 11 Covid-19 positive patients who died from conditions that they had before they contracted Covid-19.
There have been 36 new recoveries reported since the last update, which means that there are now 3,896 active cases in isolation.
There have been 4779 cases during the outbreak that started in April 2021.
Fiji has recorded a total of 4849 cases since the first case was reported in March 2020, with 918 recoveries.
There have been 159,939 samples tested since this outbreak started in April 2021, with 202,800 tested since testing began in early 2020.
The national seven day average daily test positivity is 8.9 percent and continues on an upward trend.
Source. Radio New Zealand.
Yours sincerely
Frank Short
