Ocean View facility now offering services to treat COVID-19 patients with comorbidities – Health Minister

Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony said the Infectious Diseases Hospital (IDH) at Liliendaal, is now capable of providing a number of services to treat comorbidities in COVID-19 patients.

He was speaking Monday, during the daily COVID-19 update. He said patients with diabetes, high blood pressure, heart conditions and surgical operations, will now have access to services at the facility.

“The predominant use is COVID-19, but patients with COVID-19 also would have other illnesses, so most of the patients would have comorbidities…

So, we have enhanced the range of services that we can offer at the facility, for example if a patient needs dialysis, we can offer dialysis at the Ocean View facility, if a patient needs emergency surgery we have a surgical theater, if a patient needs emergency caesarian section, we can do that,” the minister said.

These additional services cater for pregnant women in need of emergency caesarian and those requiring surgery.

Dr. Anthony further stated that the hospital has seen “great improvement” as the government has also installed oxygen pipelines, a project that was started last year to ensure patients are properly equipped to fight the disease.

He said most of the pipelines have already been installed and are operational.

“We were installing oxygen pipelines to every bed in the hospital. We have about 195 beds at the Ocean View hospital and most of them now would have their individualised oxygen…When you compare that with previously what was there, where we had to put in oxygen tanks at the bedside, this has certainly been a great improvement,” Minister Anthony said.