GREAT NEWS for the NRH and for hospital amputees long awaiting their full rehabilitation with artificial limbs
I am delighted to be able to write and tell readers that the National Referral Hospital (NRH) has been promised the early delivery of a 20 ft by 16 ft modular steel building provided with full interior insulation to reduce heat build-up, with an air conditioner and with electric wiring for power outlets.
On arrival the structure will need to be assembled on site from instructions provided.
The building has been promised by the Solomon Islands Forest Association (SFA) Executive Council following the acknowledgement of another request that I made subsequent to the SFA’s most recent and generous donation of 300 walking aids to the NRH’s Physiotherapy Department.
The modular building will replace the Rehabilitation Workshop that was previously used in past years to manufacture and custom fit prosthetic limbs to those hospital patients that had succumbed to diabetes and had a leg amputed.
Once the modular facility is handed over to the NRH, facilitation measures will be implemented by the MOHMS to ensure the gifted workshop resumes the vital rehabilitation work needed, especially as there are known to be several hundred amputee patients still to be fitted with artificial limbs to progress their rehabilitation without the need for other kinds of walking aids.
The ‘facilitation measures’ could be aided, if requested, with support from my partner charity in New Zealand, ‘Take My Hands’ which has close working relations with the New Zealand based limbless associations.
The acquisition of a replacement building at the NRH to ensure the continuation of prosthetic services has been a long-term wish and I am very pleased the initiative is about to become a reality, but let me say nothing would have eventuated without once more the SFA going the “ extra mile” in supporting the NRH and disability needs.
The vessel freighting the modular building is expected to begin loading at its originating port on 9 August 2020.
It is believed the Solomon Forest Association has outlaid more than US $16,000 for the replacement Rehabilitation Workshop.
Yours sincerely
Frank Short
