The Colonial War Memorial Hospital Maternity Ward will be extended into a 200-bed facility. During the groundbreaking ceremony at the Suva Women’s Health Unit yesterday, Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama said the new facility would have everything anyone would expect to find in a hospital in Australia and New Zealand.

Even down to the spacing in between the beds, to give mothers greater privacy and to accommodate various treatments.

The Government would also be integrating the clinical services offered to Fijian women to a level that Fiji has never seen before.

“We’ll be putting in post, ante and neonatal facilities, a first stage delivery room, a post anaesthetics delivery unit, eight new delivery rooms, three new operating theatres, a palliative Care Ward, a High Dependency Unit, conference rooms, ultrasound and x-ray capabilities and a family planning office,” Mr Bainimarama said.

“All will be built to the same standard you will find in any hospital in more developed countries.”

Currently, CWM Hospital houses its Maternity Ward and operating theatres at opposite ends of the hospital.

Mr Bainimarama said it would change when the new unit opens its doors.

“There won’t be a need to wheel patients across to an operating theatre through crowded public walkways,” he said.

“Surgeries will be able to happen in this Women’s Health Unit. Beyond that, it will offer counselling services, even day care services, along with sub-specialty offerings such as urogynecology and fertility services.”

The Prime Minister added that every mother deserves the peace of mind and comfort that their child was being delivered safely, in a clean and hygienic space, by qualified and capable health professionals which was part of the planned upgrade.

Edited by Percy Kean

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