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Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Neglected Sabah hospital dashes children’s hopes for a better life

The frequent breakdown of the air-conditioning system at the Lahad Datu district hospital has resulted in the cancellation of a charity effort to provide surgery to 14 children with cleft lips. – Pic from Wikimedia Commons, December 17, 2014.The frequent breakdown of the air-conditioning system at the Lahad Datu district hospital has resulted in the cancellation of a charity effort to provide surgery to 14 children with cleft lips. – Pic from Wikimedia Commons, December 17, 2014.
It took an incursion by armed Suluk militants on Sabah's east coast in February 2013 to turn the shabby Lahad Datu district hospital of 268 beds into a frontline medical centre with the latest technology to handle mass battlefield casualties.
Among the high-tech medical equipment installed at the hospital was a computerised tomography or CT scan, while top notch surgeons, including a plastic surgeon and one specialising in facial reconstruction, were posted there.
However, in just over a year, this hospital has slid back to the state it was in before the conflict.
“The hospital is a victim of the Malaysian malaise, poor maintenance,” a source in the Sabah Medical Department told The Malaysian Insider.
The hospital has three operating theatres (OTs) that in better times handled 10 to 15 surgeries, of all types, daily.
However, frequent breakdown of the air-conditioning system had rendered two of the three OTs out of service for most part in the last three years. The only exception was the time when the Suluks landed, according to the source.
The breakdown occurred with such regularity that the hospital administrators made sure one OT had to be in service at all times to handle emergency cases.
“Now the hospital handles three to four cases a day,” the source said.
“If there is a surgery going on in that one OT and a life-threatening case comes in that requires immediate surgery, all the hospital can do is pray the patient lives long enough for the surgery to end or survives the road dash to the next nearest hospital in either Tawau (151km away), or Sandakan (176km away),” the source added.
But the Tawau and Sandakan hospitals are reportedly in a similar predicament as the Lahad Datu hospital.
The problem with the air-conditioning system had persisted the past three to four years, even before the Suluk militants came, the source said.
“Repairs were made but they broke down again so often that doctors and surgeons felt it was a waste of time to draw up their surgery schedule.
“What happens is that doctors and surgeons not attached to the emergency unit find they do not have much work to do,” the source said.
Last year, it was reported that the air-conditioning system broke down a total of five times and the operating theatres could not be used for anything between five days and two weeks after each breakdown.
“Also, after the air-cond is repaired, it takes another two to three days to sterilise the room,” the source said.
The latest breakdown, which occurred last week and has yet to be repaired, had wrecked the plan of a charity organisation to provide surgery for 14 children with cleft lips. Some of the children are as young as three years old.
Sharing the disappointment of the children is surgeon Dr Margaret Leow who had volunteered to take on some of the cases.
“It’s so heart-breaking,” said Dr Leow, a plastic surgeon with Universiti Hospital in Kuala Lumpur.
Not knowing when they could have the surgery must be painful for the children, she added.
“They had high hopes of what the surgery could do to change their lives. We tried to give them that hope.
“The hope to look normal, the hope that they would not be taunted when they enrol in school when the time comes, the hope they could speak better and not with a slur, and the hope they could land a job without their cleft lip getting in the way.
“Now everything is uncertain. We are uncertain if they will ever get the surgery and the children must be wondering if they will get a normal life and a normal face like yours and mine,” said Dr Leow.
A doctor at the Lahad Datu hospital said the air-conditioning problem had also impacted the lives of the people there.
“This is a rural place and people here are generally poor.
“Just to get to this hospital could cost them a small fortune. Going to Kota Kinabalu and to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for treatment is therefore out of the question for them.
“It'll be like going overseas, going to Australia,” the doctor said.
“They will just have to bear the pain till the government fixes the problem here.”
The doctor said replacing the broken air-conditioning system would solve the problem.
“The one that we have is like a bicycle tube that is patched up over and over and still leaks.”
The joke among the hospital's surgical staff is: “We'll just wait for another intrusion or maybe the election to get air-conditioning", the doctor said.
Sabah Health director Dr Christina Rundi told The Malaysian Insider that repairs to two of the three operating theatres had been done and the theatres have been reopened for operations.
She said the third one will be opened by mid-December.
She said repairs and maintenance of the air-conditioning system had been done in the past and she hoped to replace the system soon.
“Our main aim is to provide quality services and care to our patients.
“While the public or some individuals only highlight the bad points, there are many officers working towards ensuring that the hospital runs.
“Even when we had to close the theatres for repair and maintenance, we ensured that alternatives were available,” she said.
“They may not be ideal but we don't leave our patients in the lurch,” Dr Christina added.
- TMI

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