We had a smooth sail from Samoa. Our two day journey to the Kingdom of Tonga provided us with some much needed rest and some time to prepare for our Tongan mission. Having offered up Saturday as a sacrifice to the International Date Line, we arrived on Monday and I was anxious to get ashore and start working. Two Australian LCHs (Landing Craft Heavy) had joined us and will be used to bring our gear ashore. Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other plans on Monday. Heavy rain and rough seas tossed the flat-bottomed LCHs about too much to transfer our gear aboard. Instead we spent all day Monday in a constant state of readiness…waiting for the green light that never came.
On Tuesday, I awoke to calm seas and a busy schedule. Monday was supposed to be our setup day. Now we have to setup and open our clinic on the same day. At 0700 I raced from my room to the galley to see how much food I could pack away in the 10 minutes I had to eat breakfast. It turns out that I'm a remarkably slow eater. By 0715 I was on a RHIB headed to the town of Pangai, on the Tongan island of Lifuka.
I arrived on shore with my stomach growling and was disheartened to learn that my haste this morning had been in vain. Due to some miscommunication, our gear would not be ready for offload until 1000. 'Hurry up and wait' is a concept I've become quite familiar with during my time here.
Lifuka is a fairly small island; only 5 kilometer long and less than a kilometer wide in most parts, but it is beautiful. The beach is lined with coconut palms and small wooden boats are moored just off shore. It looks delicate on approach; the island is basically a low mound of sand atop a massive coral reef. It would take little more than a heavy rain or strong wave to wash it into the sea. In fact, that is a major reason why we have come to Tonga. In addition to medical care, we will be conducting emergency preparedness drills and helping them prepare for a natural disaster.
Our clinic site this time around is Nui'ui Hospital. It is the island's main hospital and is, by far, the nicest medical facility I've seen since joining with Pacific Partnership. The hospital is a one story building shaped like a T. Although not laid out like a US hospital, it does have all the major components. There are recognizable patient rooms, a dentistry clinic, a surgical suite, a laboratory, and a pharmacy. It even has an ambulance garage.
John and I made short work of setting up our pharmacy. We spent a good amount of time before we arrived in Tonga redesigning the formulary that was built for this mission. Our resulting formulary is much more compact and optimized for this mission. In no time, we were setup and ready to fill prescriptions. We saw 64 patients in our first day and filled 132 prescriptions. Not bad for a half day and an empty stomach, but tomorrow will be the real test.
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