There are not enough beds available in the National Hospital’s paediatric ward to cater to children with some parents resorting to spending a night in their vehicles with their sick children while waiting for available beds.

A parent who did not want to be named had gone through the experience on Saturday evening and explained that he was sleeping in his vehicle with his child while waiting for an available bed at the ward.

"Waiting for transfer to children's ward. No bed. Asked nurse that I'm taking my son to my car to sleep," he said.

Attempts by this newspaper to get a comment from the Ministry of Health officials and the Director General, Aiono Dr. Alec Ekeroma on Sunday were unsuccessful.

Samoa Observer understands that this is not the first time this had happened especially in the paediatric ward. For sick children that need to be hospitalised and transferred to the paediatric, they are initially treated and hospitalised in the emergency ward and if they need to be hospitalised for more than one day and there are no available beds at the paediatric, they can remain at the emergency ward until there is an available bed.

In late April this year, children who were diagnosed with severe Influenza B went through the same experience with the shortage of hospital beds at the children's ward with Aiono confirming at that time that the number of Influenza B cases continued to increase.

He said in a press conference at the time that a total of 70 children (0-12 years) were admitted to the Tupua Tamasese Meaole National Hospital.

“We only have 54 beds at the paediatric ward so there were not enough beds for all of those who were admitted last week,” Aiono said. “So what we did was that we used other wards in the hospital for all the children and the number is increasing.

“It has been two to three months since the flu started doing the rounds and it was over three weeks ago that we realized that the number continued to increase.

“The problem with this is that we don’t have enough manpower to cater to all the sick people and children.”

And to assist the health authorities address the increase in cases, Aiono said this is why they asked the Cabinet for all Government schools to extend their holidays for another week.

“The request to Cabinet is based on our belief that keeping children at home will help contain the spread of the flu and we also want to deal with the issue at hand with the numbers we have collected on the cases being reported to the different clinics and hospitals in the country,” Aiono added.

According to Aiono, the total number of Influenza B cases reported in mid-April is 2,441.

Children with “severe cases” were being treated in the intensive care units while others are treated and kept in the general wards at the hospital.

Nonetheless, Aiono confirmed that other children who have been admitted have been moved to other wards in the hospital while others have been referred to the district hospital close by to where they say.