Mount Martha Rotary members supported a Rotary volunteer dental team from Australia in installing equipment and furnishings for seven modern new dental surgeries and a sterilizing room established at a National Oral Health centre for the Solomon Islands. A first for this impoverished nation. During a three week visit to Honiara a volunteer RAWCS team has professionally converted this building to an independent Dental Hospital within the Honiara National Referral Hospital.
In 2017 the National Referral Hospital in Honiara offered Rotary part of this building which they intended to use as a dental clinic, but they had neither the funds nor the expertise to build it. In October and November 2019 on a three week visit to Honiara a volunteer RAWCS team has professionally converted this building to an independent Dental Hospital within the Honiara National Referral Hospital (“No.9”)
Almost two tonnes of custom-made dental cabinetry flat packs were manufactured to order and shipped in a Donations In Kind (Rotary Australia World Community Service project) 40-foot container from Melbourne. The container held dental and medical supplies, including 27 hospital beds, medical equipment and 25 wheelchairs. The medical items were distributed directly to the staff and wards where they were needed by a Rotary Volunteer, an intensive care nurse with over 25 years’ experience in Pacific Island hospitals in Tonga and East Timor with a large hospital in Ballarat.
The work involved :-- Specialist surgery design
- Procurement and transportation of 9 dental chairs, compressor, suction motors and ancillary equipment
- Fabrication of custom manufactured dental cabinetry and sinks from flat-packs for 6 surgeries
- Painting all rooms and varnishing bamboo worktops
- service installations including plumbing, central suction and compressed air connections to 7 dental chairs and cabinetry
- constructing a new sterilizing room and providing Autoclaves
