THE country’s first isolation facility has been commissioned by Aspen Medical at its Lautoka Hospital.
During the opening of the new facility this week, Aspen Medical CEO Gavin Whiteside said this would ensure illnesses such as COVID were treated separately by a highly trained medical team.
“The negative pressure isolation room is a first for Fiji. So, we learned a lot of lessons as a global community when COVID hit and the importance of isolation, infection, prevention controls,” said Mr Whiteside.
“What we have got in place now is a clinical negative pressure room and that means if we have someone that has COVID or a highly infectious disease that needs intervention in an emergency department, we can put them in this room and we can treat them there.
“Our staff will have the appropriate training and PPE to treat that patient.
“We are not putting someone that is highly infectious in a bed next to 12 others and potentially infect them.”
He said Ba Hospital would also have a clinical isolation room.
Meanwhile, Minister of Finance Professor Biman Prasad hailed Aspen Medical for its ongoing commitment to improving its level of services for Fijians.
“The opening of these facilities is an indication of what we can do in Fiji and apart from this partnership, we are supporting other private entities as well by providing incentives,” Prof Prasad said.
“What we want in the long run is to have these public private partnership model that will work and provide world class medical services to our people and also link to a much broader public health service delivery so that we can provide these interventions.”
