LETTER | Real change in an ailling hospital

LETTER | I am writing in regards to two articles posted last week in other news outlets regarding the Covid-19 healthcare worker cluster in Sarawak General Hospital (SGH).

As of April 30, 56 SGH healthcare workers have been infected. In a carefully worded statement, Health Ministry director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah made it clear that none of these 56 healthcare workers was infected while treating Covid-19 patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) or Covid wards, a statement that was true but also missed the point.

The truth on the ground is that the cluster began with Sarawak’s first Covid-19 case who in a series of unfortunate events was admitted to a non-Covid ward. This heralded the first batch healthcare worker transmission that has led us to where we are today.

While it is undeniable that others among the infected healthcare workers may have been infected elsewhere, the message from the authorities suggests that healthcare workers had somehow steered clear of being infected in the line of service. This was unfair for those who were in service to that particular patient and subsequently infected.

Many of us remember the SGH of the early 2000s as a simpler place. But we no longer live in a simple world. The pandemic has caught us off-guard. This is a hospital where most wards still rely on manual tracing of laboratory results.

A patient’s blood result is either printed and eventually dispatched to the ward. Otherwise, staff are required to walk to the laboratory to trace it. This does not bode well for emergencies, what more during a pandemic, where efficient laboratory results can be crucial to decision making.

This is a hospital struggling with the efficient administration of beds, where patients stranded in the accident and emergency area are commonplace.

This is a hospital with inadequate hardware - ventilators, scan machines, functioning bed frames and more. After the failed Petra Jaya hospital project, the new construction is scheduled to finish next year, a sorely needed addition.

This is a hospital where even tissue and soap dispensers are occasionally empty and take hours to be refilled, thus raising questions about infection control.

This is a hospital that has had to deal with long operation theatre waiting lists, influenza outbreaks, flooding due to poor drainage, and frequently broken lifts.

This is the hospital that is now tasked to carry the torch of combating Covid-19 in the larger Kuching area and its nearby districts.

'We owe it to the public'

In the fallout of the first Covid-19 case, urgent meetings were arranged, wards and staff were mobilised, resources were brought in. Fires were put out left and right as we went through growing pains to adjust.

Personal protection equipment (PPE) distributions were unequal and scavenging for individual items were commonplace. We remain grateful for donations from private sectors and individuals.

Healthcare workers who were close contacts of positive cases were told to return to work before their swab results, leading to confusion for both their colleagues and families.

They struggled to understand the need to fulfil the demand for service while potentially endangering more patients, colleagues and loved ones. There was little clarity in the risk assessments and there were discrepancies in protocols.

Little was mentioned about whether the Sarawak Heart Centre, the only other large government hospital in our area, could lessen our burden. It was unlikely that we could expect the private sector to help as well. The glaringly painful question was at hand - what exactly was the master plan?

Amidst the chaos, psychiatric services are being offered to hospital staff - we are grateful. However, these questions remained - have we been molly-coddled into believing the problem is us and our inability to cope?

Are we to believe that the system is alright, but we aren’t? It is true, the last few months have been extremely stressful for us and our families. But surely things can get better - we merely want better resources, facilities, ongoing transparency and adequate communication.

We owe it to the public. With the numbers of Covid-19 falling, our public may prematurely loosen the discipline they had during earlier movement control order phases, putting all previous efforts at risk. Perhaps, ironically, there is no better motivator to stay at home than knowing that ones’ local Covid hospital is in dire straits.

I welcome the Sarawak state authorities’ decision to set up a committee to look into the ground situation, with the hope that the truth should lead to the delivery of more resources, efficient staff allocation, better working conditions, and most importantly, an overhaul of archaic systems that have long plagued this beloved Sarawakian institution that we call SGH.

As government servants, we stay silent in fear of repercussions, mentally defeated by a system seemingly deprived of resources and facilities stuck in the past.

May I remind the readers of Leonardo Da Vinci’s timeless quote: “Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.”

Until the day that SGH is given adequate resources, the rest of us continue to serve the people, asking ourselves - what is the cost of truth? Will it take a death of healthcare worker to wake the authorities up? God forbid.