Transcript
CHRISTINA POLIAI: For instance we started off with six patients, five to six patients, we started off in 2005 and at the moment we have got 97 local patients plus six holiday patients. So we are just over our capacity of 88, because we can only cater for 88 but now we have to add on another shift, just trying to cater for the need, for patients who need dialysis.
DON WISEMAN: I guess back 12 years ago when those figures started there would have been a lot of people who just didn't get treated at all. They went untreated.
CP: Yes and plus with the number of NCDs on the increase, in the next five years we are probably looking at up to 200 patients.
DW: It is an expensive process isn't it? Are you ready for that? Are you preparing for it?
CP: The government is helping out a lot. They are assisting us financially, especially with our consumables because it is the most expensive resources we have to deal with at the moment. But we are just looking at the numbers that are coming in. We are trying to forecast and see what we are expecting in the next ten years.
DW: The threat from non communicable disease across the Pacific has been talked about a lot over the last few years, hasn't it? Do you think all of that talk is starting to take effect or are people ignoring it?
CP: I think people are just starting to realise the effect of NCDs on our lives now but with the awareness programmes we are starting to work on in the last five years, so hopefully in the next five years we will start and see the effect of that. But at the moment it is just that people are starting to change their lifestyles, especially with their eating habits, exercising, eating the right kind of food - all those measures that can try and reduce the incidence of NCDs and especially ki9dney disease.
DW: you mentioned that you have got five visitors there. Is that a common thing for you - to have people on holiday and they come for dialysis.
CP: Yes we have people from all over the world. For instance from Australia, people from the States, those Samoan people living overseas and when they want to visit their families it is easier now that we have a dialysis unit here. So we call them holiday patients. They come in every once in a while, have treatment here. When we have space we offer dialysis to them but when we start to run out of space, they know, because we don't have enough space to dialyse patients apart from our local patients.
DW; So from time to time you have to turn people away.
CP: Yes, holiday patients but not our local patients.
DW; How do they get on then, then, if they can't get dialysis?
CP: There is an application process. They apply from overseas and they are only able to travel if they get approval to travel and if they have got space here to dialyse, but if they send an application over and we said that we are running out of space - that's never happened - but that is something we are trying to look if the rate of dialysis patients is still going to be on the increase, then we have to look at stopping holiday dialysis for holiday patients that plan to travel over.
