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.”
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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.
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