In the many issues I write about and post on my international website www.solomonislandsinfocus.com, and especially concerns I raise over medical problems, including non-communicable diseases, such as heart conditions, diabetes and cancer that greatly affect a wide majority of citizens in the Solomon Islands, I have the impression that my comments coming from an “outsider” and one with no medical qualifications are considered lightly or totally ignored.
If that should indeed be the case then I would please ask that some attention is given to what I have been writing about rheumatic heart disease in the Solomons, especially as it known it is highly prevalent and a large number of young children are suffering from the disease and cannot have the kind of cardiologist treatment and surgery most needed at the NRH at the present time.
I believe it is incumbent on the MHMS and the government to get RHD sufferers priority attention through diplomatic partners even if it means flying in specialist to undertake medical assessments of such patients and carrying out surgery on those that are assessed as most likely to benefit from a life saving operation.
I expect to be criticised for citing the fact that several Chinese police officers and Chinese construction engineers recently arrived in the country and underwent quarantine before beginning their work. Why not a team of cardiologist and specialist surgeons do the same and then begin work at the NRH with the languishing RHD patient? I feel confident Australia could help out if the seriousness of the RHD patients was known. I say this knowing of the plight of an 11 year old boy with RHD and the intense anguish of his parents for his care. His case is not the only one.
I continue to be troubled over the passing of the late 16 year old Linta MABO who suffered for 4 years, in and out of hospital with RHD, only to pass away so very sadly when donor funding was ultimately secured to see her transfer to a hospital in Australia where surgery would have been undertaken that might very well have given her many more years of health.
I have other concerns regarding cancer patients and have made several appeals for at least one mammogram machine for the NRH’s cancer unit to be used for screening women and girls for signs of early breast cancer but still unaware if one such machine has been acquired and screening undertaken.
It is no secret that 70%, according to factual reports, are afraid of being diagnosed with cancer and the same statistical reports claim 56% say a cancer diagnosis is their biggest fear, above illnesses including heart disease and Covid. I expect much is the same among citizens of the Solomon Islands.
These days an early detection of cancer can be treated and why I continue to raise my concern for a mammogram machine for the NRH’s cancer unit, knowing as I do breast cancer is a leading cause of death in the Solomon Islands.
Yours sincerely
Frank Short
