A former Marudi Hospital medical officer has refuted the claim that the hospital had conducted its first successful open appendectomy operation recently.

Dr Ong Eng-Joe, who worked in the hospital from 1998 to 2000, was responding to a news report published yesterday, stating that Marudi Hospital had reached a milestone last Friday after successfully conducting its first open appendectomy surgery.

“It was not the first time that open appendectomy was done successfully in Marudi Hospital.

“It was already done by medical officers when I was a medical officer there in 1998-2000 and even before then, especially during the era when there were no roads from Marudi to Miri and when Marudi was only accessible by air and the Baram River,” Dr Ong stated in an email to The Borneo Post.

Therefore, Dr Ong, who now works as a paediatric hemato-oncologist in Kuching, said that there is an inaccuracy in the news report stating that the first open appendectomy was just done.

“Improving surgical capabilities and facilities in the rural hospitals is laudable, but rewriting history is not,” he added.

On Dec 16, Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah shared a statement by Dr Nur Natasha, a medical officer at the hospital, on his Facebook page which said the surgery was conducted by medical officers from the hospital.

“Alhamdulillah, today it is indeed a historic day for Marudi Hospital which successfully conducted an ‘Open Appendectomy’ surgery. Before this, medical procedures requiring surgeries were carried out only during a specialist’s visit or referred to Miri Hospital for further treatment,” said the statement.

Source:
courtesy of THE BORNEO POST

by JUDE TOYAT

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