The Armed Forces would be opening a field hospital in Tawau to provide assistance in treating cases not related to Covid-19.
TAWAU (Oct 11): The Malaysian Armed Forces (ATM) will open a field hospital in Tawau to provide assistance in treating cases other than Covid-19, said Senior Minister (Security) Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob.
He said that this would also help reduce the burden of the Ministry of Health (MoH) in treating COVID-19 patients in the East Coast of Sabah.
Apart from that, the Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) would also make daily flights to help MoH to bring swab test samples from Sabah to laboratories in Kuala Lumpur as well as bring MoH frontliners to
Sabah and to Peninsula.
Ismail Sabri said that among the focus of the ATM field hospital were trauma and emergency surgery, maternity ward and others.
He said the decision was made following the presentation by the MoH in a special session of the National Security Council yesterday on the need to add medical facilities to address the situation in Sabah
following the expected increase in positive Covid-19 cases in the state.
According to him, the field hospital has 100 beds in various wards with a strength of eight medical officers and 54 other ranks, consisting of one commander, five specialist doctors, three medical officers and
other staff.
With the field hospital focusing on cases other than Covid-19, Tawau Hospital can fully focus on treating Covid-19 patients, he said after a virtual press conference posted live via the Ministry of Defence’s
Facebook yesterday.
Ismail Sabri added that RMAF would also carry out daily flights to Sabah to assist the MoH in logistics matters which includes bringing medical staff to Sabah and from Sabah back to the Peninsula, besides bringing swab test samples to laboratories in the Peninsula as the Sabah’s laboratory capacity was declining due to increasing screening.
It was agreed to bring the test sample to laboratory in Peninsular so as not to wait for the results of smear test for too long, he said.