The Angau Memorial Hospital psychiatric department has discharged 10 patients and reduced its services to outpatient only, acting nurse manager Manosa Uki says.
Uki said this followed the directive of senior executive management to accommodate Coronavirus (Covid-19) patients on hospital campus.
A circular by the provincial health authority dated Sept 20 stated that as part of the preparedness to better care for Covid-19 patients, the new tuberculosis (TB) ward would be freed to cater for them.
The circular stated that the 12 TB patients would be moved to medical ward 7C and medical patients to be moved to the psychiatric ward in 7B.
“So as of yesterday, we do not have a psychiatric ward and we still don’t know what to do with our outpatient,” Uki said.
“We’ve discharged our patients but our major concern is that some of them have not fully recovered to return to the community.” When patients return to community, they don’t continue their medication and relapse to the stage where they become community problem.
“Our arrangement may be to visit them at their residence but it won’t be an easy task in terms of logistics; patients are scattered all over Lae and outside the city so that would be a challenge.”
Staff from the TB department have similarly expressed their disappointment on the changes.
They questioned why heads of department and clinical staff were not consulted prior to the decision.
They said the decision was unfair and called on the management to consider other options instead of TB due to the old medical wards unconducive state without proper ventilation for their patients.
Concerned staff gathered yesterday to meet with health authority chief executive officer Dr Kipas Binga but were unsuccessful.
Attempts by The National to get comments from PHA were unsuccessful.
Source: The National
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