A new Government multipurpose vessel is expected to be arriving from Malaysia soon.

The director Government Shipping Services (GSS) Josese Lawaniyasana said the new vessel would provide hospital operation services to support people during disaster relief and humanitarian operations.

“It contains a fully equipped operating room and recovery room and can carry up to 40 passengers,” he said

He said the new vessel was supposed to arrive in March, but it would now be arriving in April.

The vessel has the capacity of transporting 316 tonnes of water to drought stricken islands and can also cart a maximum of 250 tonnes of general cargo.

He said the new vessel was 41 metres long

The multi-purpose vessel was designed and built for the purpose of providing quick relief response and basic medical services during the aftermath of natural disasters, medical outreach programmes or disease outbreaks.

Lessons learned from the events of natural disasters in the past years have provided an incentive to modernise Fiji’s disaster response capabilities and make disaster response more proactive rather than reactive.

Mr Lawaniyasana said the Ministry of Health and Medical Services helped in the design of the hospital inside the vessel.

The Ministry, he said, would also be responsible for the staffing of the hospital.

Edited by Jonathan Bryce

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