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.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS