White River Clinic in west Honiara will be reopened within two weeks, Assistant Director Nursing of the Honiara City Council (HCC), Moses Karuni said.
Karuni said their renovation work will finish soon and they are certain that the official opening will occur within two weeks from now.
White River clinic is amongst the damaged health centres during the April flash flood last year, which has left the populated residential suburb to rely on the nearby Rove clinic for quite some time.
“The clinic was closed on April 3 last year and temporarily opened on August last year as an emergency respond to the measles outbreak in the country,” Karuni said.
He said that they are doing their best to ensure the clinic is well equipped and ready to deliver the much needed service to the community, seeing that nearby areas outside Honiara like Kakabona and Kongualai are relying on White River clinic as well for medical services.
Karuni said the maintenance of White River clinic should finish by November last year but manpower shortage and breakdown of machines affected their efforts and plan to finish the job on time given by the funding agency (World Health Organisation).
“However, an extension to our work was granted by our donor partner (WHO) considering our manpower limitation to shoulder all the damaged clinics in Honiara namely Mataniko clinic, Pikinini clinic, New Dental clinic and now the White River clinic which will soon be opened.
“So we are happy that the work is progressing well and nearly finished, except for jobs outside of the clinic like constructing a proper drainage system which we need technical people from the Ministry of Infrastructure Development (MID) to assist us.”
Karuni appealed to the good people of Whiter River community to support their work done on the clinic since they are the ones who will serve by the clinic and they must take ownership responsibility for it.
“White River residents must respect and care for the clinic and its facilities, give hand in any work done to improve the clinic and support the work of medical staff who will station there to provide health services,” he said.
Karuni said misbehaviour such as stoning the property, removing clinic facilities without authorisation and threatening of health officers must stop.
“We must work together as a community for benefit of everyone in the community,” he said.
BY AATAI JOHN
