For a small island nation of over 200,000 people our health indicators in recent years do not make for pleasant reading.

We have dropped our guard in a number of areas, in terms of the health outcomes of Samoan citizens, which if not addressed sooner could have long-term implications for Samoa and our already vulnerable economy.

Data courtesy of the World Health Organisation (W.H.O.) on Samoa show that cardiovascular disease (34 per cent) is the leading cause of death in the country, followed by other non-communicable diseases (18 per cent), cancer (15 per cent) and diabetes (9 per cent). In fact W.H.O. says about 81 per cent of deaths in Samoa are linked to non-communicable diseases or N.C.D.s.

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 and the multiple positive cases Samoa has recorded in the last 2.5 months, comes with new challenges for local authorities. The jury is still out on how infrastructure and personnel within the Ministry of Health (M.O.H.) will handle community transmission of COVID-19, if the country were to experience such a scenario.

Nonetheless we remain thankful for investments in the health sector by the previous Administration over the years, which together with the support of friends of Samoa such as China, gave the Tupua Tamasese Meaole National Hospital (T.T.M.) a Moto’otua a US$60 million upgrade to usher in new outpatient facilities, paediatrics, maternity, surgical and medical wards amongst others.

But an article (Faulty purification system affects dialysis treatment) in the Friday 11 March 2022 edition of the Samoa Observer revealed a shortcoming, which was probably overlooked when the Government acquired various state-of-the-art medical equipment for the new hospital.

The article reported on the malfunctioning of a water purification system at the National Kidney Foundation (N.K.F.) the previous weekend, which led to the shutdown of dialysis machines for 12-hour period (between Saturday 5 March and Sunday 6 March), throwing the spanner in the works of the patients’ treatment schedule.

The N.K.F. General Manager Mulipola Lose, when contacted by the Samoa Observer, confirmed in an interview on Tuesday that they’ve had technical problems with their water purification equipment since last Saturday.

"There was a problem with the water treatment equipment," Mulipola said. "It took a while to fix and we had support from engineers of the Samoa Water Authority who had worked together with our committee."

According to the General Manager, the issue with the water treatment equipment was identified and rectified with N.K.F. switching on their dialysis machines after 12 midnight on Sunday.

Mulipola said no one was affected by the shutdown and his staff made sure everyone was treated when the machines became operational again. 

Thankfully, none of the N.K.F. dialysis patients were affected by the brief two-day shutdown last week, but it does raise questions about whether the N.K.F. or the M.O.H. for that matter have an existing maintenance program for critical medical equipment.

A maintenance program ensures medical equipment purchased by the Government for the national hospital at Moto’otua, district hospitals in Upolu and Savai’i and State-run programs such as the N.K.F. have a safe and cost-effective maintenance regime to ensure optimal performance.

The procuring of medical equipment, without putting in place a maintenance program, could also impact patients as any machine working below optimal performance can potentially give mixed test results to endanger the life of a patient.

We are aware of a working relationship between the Samoa and American Samoa Governments, in relation to the maintenance and servicing of Samoa’s only C.T. Scan  machine at the T.T.M. 

But how long do we have to rely on the benevolence of our neighbours when we should think long-term and set up our own maintenance unit within the M.O.H. to oversee this responsibility?

The maintenance unit would undertake scheduled inspections of medical equipment to evaluate potential risk and work to minimise machine failure to boost safety, efficiency and reliability.

If such a unit existed within the M.O.H. structure, we would have probably saved the 300,000 plus COVID-19 Pfizer vaccines from getting ruined by unstable power supply, and even been alerted to the water purification treatment woes at the N.K.F. to avoid dialysis machines being switched off.

With the COVID-19 pandemic now becoming the new normal, it is becoming harder to bring in technical experts, thus it would make sense in the current circumstance to look within to tackle our own challenges.