Frontline health workers in the Solomon Islands have said that its health system is on the brink of collapse as the country struggles to deal with a devastating outbreak of COVID-19.
A senior doctor and two nurses at the National Referral Hospital (NRH) in the capital, Honiara, have told of how there are no beds for COVID-19 patients as well as a lack of facilities and staff shortages that have led to COVID-19-positive nurses being recalled to work.
“People are dying on the floor, the hospital is overcrowded... Sick people and dead bodies were all over,” a senior doctor at the NRH said. “The morgue is full. It’s a sad experience. I have never seen this before.”
Photo: Bloomberg
The Solomon Islands, a country of about 700,000 people in the South Pacific, had remained COVID-19-free throughout the pandemic, without a single case of the virus in 2020 and last year.
However, since COVID-19 arrived in the middle of last month, the country has recorded nearly 6,000 cases and about 70 deaths.
The doctor, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the true number of deaths was likely to be much higher.
“We have witnessed that there are deaths at home, not brought to hospital because of the fear that any dead body that comes to the hospital will be swabbed and once tested positive will not be allowed to be taken out by the relatives,” he said. “So some deaths are kept at home and it’s a sad and terrible thing to happen.”
The doctor said that healthcare facilities were struggling to cope, with the 56-bed Central field hospital fully occupied.
He said that while tents had been prepared outside the hospital for the treatment of COVID-19 patients, they had no toilets, shower rooms or air-conditioning, which he alleged showed the government’s lack of preparation.
“I would say that the government has failed this nation,” the doctor said.
The NRH has turned its orthopedic ward into a “red zone” COVID-19 ward, where critically ill patients needing oxygen are treated.
However, both he and a nurse in the hospital confirmed there were COVID-19 patients across other wards in the hospitals.
Staff were completely overwhelmed by the number of cases, the doctor said.
“We do not have enough nurses to look after the COVID-19 patients, meaning there’s no proper observations and monitoring will take place on sick patients,” he said.
A registered nurse, who wished to remain anonymous, said staff were so overstretched that COVID-19-positive nurses were being called in to work.
“In the past weeks, we have had no option but to recall those tested positive yet asymptomatic to come back to work as we can’t handle the increasing COVID-19 cases daily,” the nurse said.
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS