Archive for October, 2008

Date: Friday 31st of October, 2008
Time: 8 – 9am
Presenter: Mr. Marcel Pool – VSO (Voluntary Services Overseas) Volunteer, Physiotherapy department
Topic: Community Based Rehabilitation – A New Challenge For The Physiotherapy Department.
Venue: Jessie Griffiths Hall (Hospital Mess)

Summary:

VSO Volunteer Marcel Pool has been working at the Goroka General Hospital for the last 2 years. As the Officer In Charge (OIC) of the Physiotherapy Department he has worked on capacity building for National Physiotherapist and Physio-technicians. The department is fully operational now and the nationals are very capable of providing quality services to the people of the Eastern Highlands Province (EHP). Per 1 January 2009 Mr. Bill Iyape, one of the National Physiotherapist who finished his study at the DWU in March 2008, will be taking of the OIC position of the Physiotherapy Dept.

VSO stand for Voluntary Services Overseas and Marcel is working for the Disability Program of VSO PNG. This Program has the following main objectives:

1. To enable disabled people to access appropriate hospital and Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) services.
2. To promote disability as a rights-based mainstream development issue amongst VSO volunteers, partner organizations and communities.

As part of the first objective, Marcel has just extended his contract with VSO and the hospital to work as a CBR coordinator. To do this work he will be working with the CBR Unit of Mt.Sion Institute for Disabled Persons. CBR is a concept that aims to provide services for people with disabilities in their communities. It is based on a rights-based approach, which means that people with disabilities have the same rights as others to be included in their society. CBR will just work if a collaboration of organizations from National, Provincial and Local level support CBR to empower people with disabilities in the community, and the community itself, to create an inclusive barrier-free society.

During his presentation Marcel explained what CBR stands for and how he and the Physiotherapy Dept. want to take up the challenge to improve CBR services in the EHP. One of the priorities will be to set up a management system to support CBR-volunteers. They will be key-persons to make CBR work in the rural areas of this province. Support from Provincial Level Government and other NGO’s will be needed to develop this management system.

Date: Friday 24th of October, 2008
Time: 8 – 9am
Presenter: Dr. A. Malagisa and Team (Obstetrics & Gynaecology Dept)
Topic: Summary of O&G Statistics for the last 4 years
Venue: Jessie Griffiths Hall (Hospital Mess)

Summary:

The statistics have indicated that the services we provide have improved a lot. This may be due to the increased number of hard working staff. For example, 82% of mothers who delivered at Goroka General Hospital are booked, following that the still birth rates have reduced from 30.2 in 2004 to 21.9 per 1000 total births. Amazingly, the rate of instrument delivery is the same as caesarean sections at 5.1%. This means that the staff do not take short cuts into doing caesarean sections but go the harder way. The leading cause of maternal death was puerperal sepsis from septic abortion. The practice of illegal abortion by unqualified staff or traditional healers is quiet common in Goroka. The dilemma of wether abortion should be legalised or not was also discussed in the PNG medical symposium in Rabaul. However, a rigid conclusion was not reached yet. Comparing our centres with other centres and Port Moresby, we firstly realized that our statistics are up to date and our performance is supreme, only next to Port Morsby General Hospital. We would like to comment our O&G staff, especially Dr. Malagisa and his team for the tremendous efforts put in to improve the services.

Just dropping a line in to say congrats for the website, hope the other centres come up with same.Hello to all staff and keep up the good work!

Hi Sir/madam

I am very much impressed with what you have done in creating a web site for the hospital. I just want to congratulate the hospitals management and staff. Well done. Keep up the good work.

Vincent

Sydney

Yesterday the Secretary of the National Department of Health – Dr. Clement Malau, officially opened the Business Resource Center at Goroka General Hospital. This was a momentous occasion for Hospital Staff, Management and the Board and a unique opportunity for the Hospital to share about its IT achievements over the past 18 months and also how an Open Source Software approach can provide long term tangible benefits and savings to the National Health System and other Hospitals within Papua New Guinea.

The opening of the Hospital’s Business Resource Center (BRC) has been 12 months in the planning and finally it happened! The Health Secretary, CEO’s from each of the Highlands Hospitals, senior staff from the Health Department, AUSAID advisors and Goroka Hospital Board and Management were all present for the occasion.

During his 30 min presentation – IT Manager, Robert Schilt emphasised the Information Technology achievements at the Hospital, many a first for a Public Hospital in Papua New Guinea:

1) Deployment of 60 PC’s and laptops including a LAN (1st Hospital in PNG)
2) Establishment of a Business Resource Center (1st Hospital in PNG)
3) Setting of a Training Room and Course(s) with 100+ staff trained) (1st Hospital in PNG)
4) Monthly meetings of a IM&T Steering Committee (1st Hospital in PNG)
5) Hospital Website and Online Health Forum www.ggh.org.pg (1st Hospital in PNG)
6) Access to the Hinari Subscription (1st Hospital in PNG)
7) Development of an organisational Intranet (1st Hospital in PNG)
8) Recent media coverage (1st Hospital in PNG)

(Dr. Clement Malau officially opens the Hospital’s Business Resource Center)

(From L to R: Robert Schilt (IT Manager, GGH), Dr. Joseph Apa (CEO, GGH) and Dr. Clement Malau (Health Secretary))

The CEO of Goroka General Hospital Dr. Joseph Apa also spoke at the Opening and said that the decision by the Hospital to adopt Open Source Software (OSS) over Proprietary Software (Microsoft) as part of its Strategic direction has already led to considerable savings for the Hospital. Dr. Apa elaborated on the benefits experienced by the Hospital by choosing to go down the Open Source path as being:

1) Open Source Operating Systems such as Linux Ubuntu are essentially immune to viruses. The Hospital has not had one virus incident in the last 12 months. What’s really ironic is that none of our Open Source PC’s and Laptops actually run any form of Virus Protection software.

2) By going down the Open Source path we have essentially bypassed the prohibitive costs associated with licensed software such as Microsoft Office and Virus Protection. This in itself has saved Goroka General Hospital approximately K60,000 in setup costs of our new IT Training Center.

3) We have now started the process of investigating Open Source options for an Electronic Patient Records System, something that all Hospitals around PNG are desperately needing and I am amazed at the rich collection of quality Health Information System (HIS) related applications currently available through the Open Source Community.

The ultimate objective in introducing Electronic Information Systems at Goroka General Hospital is to provide both Management and Staff with accurate and timely information that supports and enhances the delivery of an efficient Health Service to the public of the Eastern Highlands. This goal will only be achieved through the provision of efficient, reliable and integrated Health Information Systems that are cost effective.

The IT Team at Goroka General Hospital is more than happy to share their experiences with other PNG Hospitals about to embark upon a similar exercise and can be contacted on info@ggh.org.pg.

Other photos taken at the official Opening of the BRC by the Health Secretary can be viewed by clicking here.

The National Health week was celebrated during the week of August 25th – 29th, with the theme of ‘Preventing Life Style Diseases’ placing special emphasis on life style diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and heart attack. The target group was the working classes particularly the senior managers. This was because many times they are so busy that simple preventive measures such as exercise, having less stress, healthy diet are not adhered to and are frequently eating on the run.

The Hospital’s Social Committee was the drive behind these by organising basic blood checks, high blood pressure checks and also health talks were given during individual checks. Additional posters depicting life style diseases were also posted up. This event took place on the hospital lawn in the mornings. Invitations to all business houses to attend were arranged in advance resulting in a good turnout, however, having said that most that attended were staff and not the managers. After lunch all hospital staff was grouped into various teams and a game of volleyball was played with a 10 minutes warm up exercise conducted by the Physiotherapy Department. There was a good turnout and all staff voice their appreciation for the evens organised. The staff games are continuing every Wednesday afternoon as a means of preventing lifestyle disease within the health sector and also to foster good team off and on court.

Ms Theresa Palou
Pathology Services

NB: For additional photos from National Health Week 2008 at Goroka General Hospital please click here.

Dear wantoks,

I was browsing ‘the National’ on-line and was pleasantly surprised to see
GBH on the web. Congratulations on your new website!
For those who don’t know me, I worked as a Registrar in Internal Medicine
from 1998 till 2001. I was married to Jen ( a teacher at NTM) in 2000 and
left PNG in 2001 to take my Boards in the US. Currently, I’m working as an
Internist/Hospitalist at Lakeland Hospital in St.Joseph, Michigan.
I would love to hear from old friends.

I read this artical on the 26th of September 2008 on “Goroka Base Hospital
(GBH) being the first hospital in the country to go online” I am so
impressed and want to take this time to congratulate Robert, Dr Apa and
other Hospital Management and the Hospital Boards for taking this initiative
in introducing Information Technology as part of the hospital’s strategies
to improve delivery of health services to the population of Eastern
Highlands Province. It takes time and resources to establish the foundation
however, it’s usage and benefits are essential for the patients, services
and staff. Keep up the good work and may Goroka Base Hospital be a model to
other 19 hospitals in the country.

Thank you.

Lucy Au
Christchurch, NZ.

by Dr Dale Frank , a/Director Medical Services

The 44^th Papua New Guinea Annual Medical Symposium was held from the 1^st to 5^th September 2008 at the University of Vudal, Kokopo, East New Britain Province. The theme of the Symposium was Strategic Health Planning for the Future. The hospital was represented by the administrators (CEO, DMS, DCS) as well as some clinical staff.

The Symposium was officially opened by the Hon Sasa Zibe, National Minister of Health & HIV with welcome address by Sir Rabbie Namaliu, patron of the symposium, and a representative of the Hon Leo Dion, Governor of East New Britain Province. The keynote address was given by Dr Hendrik Bekedem, Regional Director Health Systems, Western Pacific Regional Office of the World Health Organisation on Health Systems and management issues in developing countries.

There were presentations on the issues facing health management in the provinces and the country over the last two decades. The national minister for health made an appeal for improved health services for the rural majority of PNG with a special mention of the very high maternal and infant mortality rates in PNG. The maternal mortality rates for PNG are the second highest in the world with about 730 deaths per 100,000 live births. The last two days of the symposium were specialty symposiums. This is where specialty groups met to discuss issues affecting their societies as well as reviewing their programs.

The symposium was enjoyed by all with local traditional entertainment and visits to the volcanoe covered town of Rabaul and the Nonga Base Hospital which is closed due to heavy ash fall from the volcanoe.

Photograph of the volcanoe and ash covered town of Rabaul September 2008

(Photo courtesy of Dr Paul Wari – Goroka General Hospital)

Dear Sir,

I was surprised to learn from my colleague here that your organization has a website. It is something that all hospitals in PNG and the government institutions do no have. It is already time that most institutions should build their website and advertise their organization. Congratulation for being the first hospital in the country to have a website.

I wish you all the best in your activities and be blessed.

Philip Lus
Health Management Student
Divine Word University, MADANG

Divine Word University (http://www.dwu.ac.pg/)