A medical team from the Nepean Hospital in Penrith has postponed their next trip to the Solomon Islands due to a shortage in intravenous fluids.
Following the Solomon Islands’ acquirement of their first CT scanner, a medical team led by Dr Matthew Tait and Dr Narko Tutuo have performed the first-ever brain surgeries in the Pacific nation. The team’s next trip has been pushed back due to unforeseen circumstances but is hopeful that it will be rescheduled before the end of the year.
“We were planning on going in the last week of August and the first week of September, but we’ve had to put it on hold because there’s an international shortage of intravenous fluids,” Dr Tait said.
“The Solomon Islands theatre team are trying to avoid doing operations that aren’t emergencies so they can maintain their supply of intravenous fluids, so we’ve had to put off our next trip but hopefully we’ll have it arranged sometime before the end of the year.”
A press release from the Health Ministers Meeting on the 16th of August stated.
“Ministers noted the global supply limitations of IV fluids due to unexpected increases in demand and manufacturing capacity constraints. Shortages of IV fluids, while easing, are expected to continue through 2024.”
The team has so far undertaken two trips over to the Solomon Islands, staying for roughly a week each time.
“The cases we’ve had the most success with are the more straightforward ones, putting in Shunts for Hydrocephalus. Hydrocephalus is when there is too much fluid in the brain, and removing benign brain tumours, we’ve had success with,” Dr Mathew Tait said.
Although the team has had to delay their travel plans, the team has experienced no previous setbacks and found support via their GoFundMe and a team of volunteers.
“We started to put together a team and we needed surgeons, anaesthetises, scrub nurses, anaesthetic nurses, recovery nurses and everyone we asked agreed straight away. We asked a lot of the companies that make the equipment we use in theatre if we could borrow some equipment and they said yes.” Dr Tait said.
“The hard parts were financing it, getting time off and dealing with the level of medical support in the Solomon Islands.”
Moving forward the team has big ambitions to better support the Solomon Islands and provide a lasting solution for lack of access to medical care, through training and supporting existing medical structures in the Solomons.