Aspen Medical theatre.

The Ba Hospital which is being run by Aspen Medical will now be able to cater for surgeries from today.

Chief Operations Officer Barry Herberts says this is a huge milestone for them as they will be able to perform certain surgeries at an international standard.

Herberts says there are three surgeries scheduled for today and because it’s also a brand-new service, they will be looking at the flows of the procedures.

“We are going to have a meeting tomorrow to see what went well and more importantly what did not go so well so part of that is so that we can all get together and fix these issues.”

Herberts says they want to build on this in order for them to have a robust system in the next few weeks.

According to Herberts, there is also a huge waiting list, but they will ensure they do all they can to provide the required services.

“With the way Lautoka had at their theatres with the fire a number of years ago, that’s only added to the waiting list also what we have seen internationally in COVID when COVID hit all elective surgeries were cancelled this is across the world not a specific Fiji problem and this also happened in Fiji and that’s because we had to primarily make sure the clinicians were safe.”

He says it’s all about systems and quality improvement in healthcare as they aim to take things nice and slow.