One of the FAIM teams on the roof of engineering; the roofs were definitely in need of repairing themselves.

Twinning programme with St John of God Hospital

The twinning programme, now sponsored by the Australian Government Aid Agency AusAID ($30,000 pa for three years) as well as St.Johns, has once again moved into top gear.  Funding allows us to bring 8 Tongans to Australia for a one month training course, and to send four Australians to Tonga for in-service, review and support.

It is sad to report that David Quinney , the Director of Nursing at St.John of God for some years now, and always an enthusiast for the programme, has resigned from St.John of God Hospital to accept a CEO/DON posting, at Mater PrivateHospital in Townsville Qld.  David was on the first twinning programme exchange from St.Johns in 1994, and has been the driving force behind their involvement for the last three years.  He will be missed.  Chris Lockett , the Building Project Officer at St. Johns has taken over the role.  He will be supported by a small committee of involved staff at the hospital.

The first four exchanges were in October 2001, and were for

·         Mr Sioeli Manu, Maintenance Engineer, Dental dept

·         Mr Teputepu Laiseni, Radiographer

·         Mr Sitlveni Misa: Plumber

·         Mr Tangitau Fukofuka: CSSD

The second set of exchanges were in April 2002, and included

·         Ms Sivihiva Latu - General Surgical Nursing

·         Mrs Matolita Holani - Midwifery Nursing

·         Mrs Tefini Mahoni - Special Care Nursing

·         Mr Ma'u Tui - Pharmacy

There were four exchanges to Vaiola

·         Ms Kylie Blake , dental nurse therapist: Launch Dental van, an Oral Health Unit for children up to the age of 12. Kylie has spent several weeks on this exchange.  She is selfless in volunteering her time, very professional in her skills, and enthusiastic about promoting the project. She has made several trips to Tonga. David Goldsmith will detail her role further in his report.

·         Maureen Waddington : Corporate Services

·         Marianne Gould : Corporate Services

·         John Macdonald PHF : ICU, in-service for donated equipment, dispersal of container. John remains a driving force behind this project, and especially in St.John of God Hospital's involvement.

Matching Grants

The Rotary Foundation has approved our application for funds to implement the recommendations of the Carl Miller Discovery Grant. The total funds received were Aus $70,000.  They were for roofing materials, water softeners, and sundry medical equipments (Blood Glucose monitors, Automatic Blood Pressure monitors etc.) and for shipping the donated dental van to Tonga . This last item alone came to $14,000.

Funding came from our own club, from Ballarat South, Torquay, Ocean Grove, and Auckland, NZ. It was supported by donations from District Designated Funds of the Rotary Foundation for Districts 9780, 9810 and 9920. The funds for DDF 9810 (US$6,000) were specifically provided for transportation of the Dental Van. Thank you to Ray Smith , the Rotary Foundation Chairman of District 9810 , who organized this very generous donation.

FAIM teams

We are currently searching for FAIM teams (Rotary Australia World Community Service Volunteers) to undertake the roofing projects, requested by the Ministry of Health, and funded by the above Matching Grant. Trevor Chapman estimates that we will need three teams of four members to complete this work.  We have a large team from Geelong who have volunteered, but urgently need 1-2 more volunteer groups.

Trevor has served the project extraordinarily well over the years, and has regrettably announced that he will no longer be available. He and Wanda were the anchors for the first Twinning programme team to visit in 1994, and got some great runs on the board with his ability to work his way around problems. I have previously reported the episode where he managed to get the Oxygen Concentrators working at Vaiola in the early days. This generator of panels of Oxygen cylinders should have been the major source of Oxygen for the hospital, but had broken down, and the hospital was paying many, many thousands of dollars per year to import bottled Oxygen.  Engineers from NZ had come up at a cost of $20,000 to get the machine going, but that initiative had failed. Trevor explored the concentrator during his first trip there, and discovered the reason for its malfunction He worked with the engineers to set up maintenance routines for this device, which has worked well for the last ten years, saving Vaiola hospital probably hundreds of thousands of dollars and providing them with a reliable source of a very vital hospital material.  There have been many other episodes where Trevor's ingenuity, initiative, and local knowledge have been critical to the success of our project.  He will be sorely missed.

Darryl Elford PHF from our club has volunteered to take over the position as building coordinator for the project. Darryl is involved heavily with the rebuilding of Rotary House, the accommodation facility for the new radiotherapy unit in Ballarat; when he has completed that very demanding task he will formally take over. In the meantime, Darryl is taking note of Trevor's last project organizing FAIM teams for the roofing projects.

Donations in Kind

We have been very well supported by Donations in Kind , the Rotary Agency in Geelong, which collects recyclable hospital/academic products, ensures they work, and sends them to targeted aid needs in Oceania. We have just shipped our third container through them, sharing the costs with the Rotary Clubs of Camberwell and Frankston North , both of whom have projects underway in Tonga.  DIK provide not only the collection of items needed, but also the shipping. Previously, this was a task funded by St. Johns and organized by John Macdonald . This has now released him to concentrate on other tasks.

Barry Bell , and more recently appointed DIK head Hank Nydam , have been very enthusiastic in supporting this project.

An example of how the various arms of the project come together would be a recent visit to the DIK stores in Geelong by the April 2002 exchange team from Vaiola .  They had seen at the 9780 District Assembly that DIK had shipped items such as humid cribs to Tonga. Matolita the midwifery nurse in that exchange, knew that more were needed by the neonatal unit. They asked to go to Geelong to see what else was available. Pens were running hot as the DIK team recorded the requests of the visitors from Tonga. 

Hank will try to get as much of their list together, and ship it in yet another container. A team from Geelong has volunteered for the FAIM project, and will be in Nuku'alofa when the container lands to arrange its dispersal, ensuring that each item gets to its intended target.

The Dental project

Continues with extraordinary enthusiasm, driven by Dr. David Goldsmith .  David led a sixth visit this year. He will report separately. However, I would like to detail another example of how these various projects dovetail into each other.

Joe Manu, a maintenance engineer at VaiolaHospital worked in the dental dept whilst David Goldsmith's team was visiting in 2000. He worked alongside Peter Copp PHF who was very impressed with his skills and enthusiasm.  He offered to provide further training in Australia to develop those skills.  The Ministry of Health recommended him for an exchange under  the twinning project of St.John of God Hospital. He came out for three months last year, not only working with Peter Copp , but also being looked after and accommodated by Peter. He worked with the 6^th dental team installing the dental caravan, but also has extended his skills to servicing other medical equipment; he assisted Peter Copp in the island of Vava'u in some maintenance of humid cribs etc.