Vachira Phuket Hospital started running out of inpatient beds last year, and hospital director Dr Chalermpong Sukontapol called for all people to see their local doctor first before joining the throngs waiting to see a physician at the island’s main government hospital.
For anyone living south of Phuket Town, that call meant nothing. People relying on state healthcare and needing to see a doctor for services beyond their local clinic had only Vachira to go to – other than the government-owned, but privately run Phuket Provincial Hospital in Rassada.
As The Phuket News championed for years, the need for an emergency department was paramount, not just for traffic accident victims but also as the first port of call for ambulances bringing people rescued from drowning from our popular southern beaches. The faster a victim receives immediate treatment, the better their chances of survival. Thankfully reason prevailed and that department opened early.
Yet the ongoing debacle over the inpatient building still to come reeks of mismanagement and misunderstanding. The reasons given have yet to explain why delay opening a true inpatient department in the blue building that stood empty for a year and then expand that to the new building later.
If it comes down to a matter of funding, we need look no further than rock celebrity and running sensation Artiwara “Toon Bodyslam” Kongmalai raising funds for government hospitals. However, as magnificent as his achievements are, and as rightly placed his heart is in trying to help the average Thai, for politeness reasons alone no one in the public sphere is asking WHY the money he is raising needs to help fund primary state healthcare.
Chalong Hospital is looking for just B153 million for its dedicated inpatient building, and that’s after a B14mn “donation” from a local rescue foundation to pay for an x-ray building and the x-ray equipment.
Meanwhile, the military powers that be this week were still trying to justify spending B12 billion on a second submarine from Thailand’s new investment darlings China – and that’s after splashing out B13.5 billion on one submarine that is scheduled for delivery next year.
Just the first sub already paid for would build 88 such hospital inpatient buildings – that’s more than one new such hospital building in every province in the country.
The second sub would raise that by another 78 such hospital buildings – that’s 166 new seven-story inpatient buildings fully fitted with medical equipment nationwide.
Now how do you justify that?