Medical Santo grateful to Ministry of Heath for support

The President of Churches of Christ Medical Santo Inc., Allen Cox, has assured the Minister of Health, Jerome Ludvaune, their organization is here for the long term “and will not run away.”

Churches of Christ Medical Santo is a Christian not-for-profit humanitarian medical aid organization established in 2012 and based in Luganville, Santo, to provide primary health services to the northern islands of Vanuatu. The project is supported by Churches of Christ in Queensland, New Zealand and Vanuatu.

The Minister of Health visited the facilities of Medical Santo recently when he was in Luganville, and Mr. Cox took the opportunity to thank the Minister for the support from the Director General, George Taleo, and the Ministry of Health (MoH) for allowing them to provide their services in Luganville and into the future.

“We try our best to provide services and support the aims of the MoH when we have resources and personnel available,” he assured Minister Ludvaune.

He explained that their Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the MoH gives Medical Santo (MS) responsibility to assist the MoH in partnership to provide increased quality health services to the Northern islands of Vanuatu.

“We think Vila Central Hospital has most of the doctors, funds and aid, which it should as the main hospital but we are supporting the northern islands,” Mr. Cox added.

“We want to assure the Minister that we are here for the long term and will not run away,” he said adding: “We are here to support, encourage, train and mentor in partnership and in cooperation with the MoH to assist them provide increased quality health services in Northern Vanuatu.”

MS charges a small fee to ni-Vanuatu for services as they believe that people respect and need to learn to pay for quality service, which helps make the clinic sustainable. But expatriates and tourists are charged “big Australian prices” and they use the money to subsidize the work of MS in the rural and island communities.

They provide nurses, midwives, doctors, paramedics and educators to provide services in their clinic and also at Northern Provincial Hospital (NPH) in Luganville, Norsup, Ambae, Maewo and in future all of the northern islands.

Their MOU gives them responsibility to assist NPH ambulance to become effective. They have been training Emergency Department (ED) staff in pre-hospital and emergency care and also the ambulance drivers how to assist in moving and lifting patients with the nurses. They have supplied defibrillators and consumables to the ED for heart monitoring and defibrillating of patients.

MS have provided one paramedic training at NPH for 18 months and another for six months. And a new paramedic is coming long term who is an experienced paramedic trainer in Australia and a will continue to develop the capacity of NPH ambulance service and up-skill the ED nurses in emergency care.

“MS has a small MOU with NPH for taking cancer biopsies and Pap smears to Australia for pathology testing.

“We have been supporting the Rapid HPV testing at NPH,” Mr. Cox said.

And they are planning a program to assist bring disability rehabilitation into Northern Vanuatu through Community-Based Rehabilitation workers.

The Medical Santo President expressed a concern to the Minister of Health about difficulties with registrations and visas for their staff and said that the DG of Health was aware of the issue and was very supportive of them with it.

“This is mainly Foreign Affairs and Immigration bottlenecks and we would appreciate some ministerial support through yourself to help solve this issue,” he appealed to the Minister of Health.

“For some longer term volunteers we ask for eight months or one year visas and only get six months from Immigration.

“To renew these visas our volunteers now have to leave the country which is wasting our finances that could be better spent in a rural community as it takes around two to three months to process a volunteer,” he said.