The hospital at Anse Royale will cease to operate as an isolation unit and revert to its normal function as a primary health centre starting next week.

With the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) pandemic under control worldwide, the Anse Royale centre is no longer needed to serve as an isolation unit, said Dr Patrick Herminie, director general for disease prevention and control.

The hospital will officially open in its new capacity on September 8.  Renovations and preparations made for possible Sars-infected cases means that the hospital will also now have in-patient capabilities, Dr Herminie said Thursday September 4 in a press conference.

Despite the change, Dr Herminie said that the legal regulations and procedures introduced in March, which required forced quarantine for suspected cases of Sars, will continue to be in effect until the ministry is “completely satisfied.”

Dr Herminie said that although some residents in Anse Royale were initially apprehensive regarding the hospital’s conversion, public cooperation was generally positive.

“It was due to this national effort and cooperation that we managed to keep Sars at bay,” Dr Herminie said.

The infrastructure put in place to cater to the isolation unit at Anse Royale, such as the fencing work and the installation of certain medical equipment, will remain, but Dr Herminie said that some of the equipment had been moved to Victoria Hospital.  Should the need arise, he said, it could easily be dispatched elsewhere.

When asked as to the true gravity of the Sars situation in Seychelles, Dr Herminie said that as small as the country is, the pandemic was definitely a threat.

The ministry felt it necessary to take drastic preparatory measures, he said, especially since some of the countries with more advanced technology, like China and Canada, were having a hard time containing the disease.

According to Dr Herminie, a committee has been set up within the ministry for the construction a new building specifically designed to be an isolation ward, along with a quarantine centre.  But the proposed building is a long-term project with no specific time frame in mind.

Dr Herminie said that until the new facility is built, a recurrence of Sars, which World Health Organisation officials have warned is a possibility, would mean that the Anse Royale Hospital would most likely again be the designated isolation facility.

In that scenario, however, Dr Herminie said that preparations had been made to ensure that the equipment and the facilities at Anse Royale could be ready within 24 hours to cope with the situation.

According to the ministry’s numbers, between April and July a total of 36,249 passengers were screened at the airport for Sars, of which 26,387 (72 percent) were non-Seychellois.  55 of the passengers were isolated and 41 were on active surveillance inside their homes.

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