THE Ministry of Health and Medical Services (MHMS) has reassured the public that the malfunctioned fridge situation at the Blood Bank Centre at the National Referral Hospital (NRH) has been dealt with.
NRH Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dr George Malefoasi said it noted the concerns raised via social media and Solomon Star article “Blood Supply in Crisis” which said have sparked many public debates.
Dr Malefoasi said MHMS wishes to reassure the public that the situation has been dealt with on Wednesday last week.
“A new fridge was installed immediately in the morning the next day (Wednesday) and two new ones are being donated by Michael Leong and Pacific Crown Hotel. The old fridge had been repaired twice previously, so steps have already been taken to replace it before it finally stopped working,” Dr Malefoasi said.
Dr Malefoasi confirmed the malfunction of the blood bank fridge occurred on Tuesday night of last week and resulted in the damage 150 blood bags which had already been discarded.
However, he said apart from the150-damaged blood bags, the hospital has a small standby fridge with 50 reserved blood bags.
“We do also have our back up plans to utilise the National Medical Stores cold chain storage. As such this poses no immediate risks to patients as stated in the media article.
“A blood donation drive has gone out and should be back soon with more stock to replace the 150 blood bags. PRC Chinese Medical Team will also donate new equipment for blood bank with a specially made blood bank fridge. This will make up a total of four fridges; a big improvement indeed and the hospital are grateful for that,” CEO Malefoasi reassured.
He said the hospital runs millions-of-dollars-worth of equipment – both specialised and general.
“All are prone for wear and tear and its often an operational responsibility to monitor, fix and replace equipments. This is just one of our operations faults our maintenance and biomedical teams fix,” Dr Malefoasi added.
He said despite the fact that NRH has standby generators in place, it also exploring the installation of power transformers or UBSs Power Backup to protect its specialised equipment from the ongoing outages of power currently experienced in Honiara because it poses risk to its equipment, especially old equipment and facilities.
Dr Malefoasi added there is an Obstetrics and Gynaecology (O&G) team from the John James Foundation operating with NRH team and the situation was controlled and managed.
Meanwhile, MHMS Permanent Secretary, Pauline McNeil stated MHMS understands the concerns raised.
As the responsible ministry, she said MHMS acted promptly and the matter was resolved.
