P&O Cruises’ Pacific Partnership with Save the Children has delivered a medical facility to remote Vanuatu Island Aneityum to replace a run-down pre-1970s building with a new dispensary.
The facility took six months to build and offers modern medical equipment and solar powered electricity. It also features a waiting area, maternity delivery room, in-patient and treatment rooms and new storage facilities.
According to the cruise line, the previous building operated without electricity for the past three years, the new facility is powered by solar panels.
P&O Cruises Senior Vice President Tammy Marshall said it was important to leave a positive footprint in the communities the cruise line visited.
“The Pacific Partnership offers a tangible and heart-warming way for P&O Cruises and its passengers to give back to the island communities that have provided an idyllic backdrop for so many cherished holiday memories.”
Tammy Marshall, P&O Cruises senior vice president
Country Director of Save the Children Vanuatu Tom Skirrow said the dispensary would provide improved healthcare outcomes for about 1800 patients on Aneityum every year.
Expectant mother Kye Nirinuput had three babies in the old dispensary and said she was “so happy to be having my fourth in the new, spacious, private maternity ward.”
The P&O Partnership has committed to building up to eight new aid posts in Vanuatu over the next two years.
It is the biggest project to date for the P&O Pacific Partnership – a collaboration between Save the Children and Australia’s leading cruise line P&O Cruises.
The partnership has raised almost $690,000 since its launch in January 2013 with four projects – two kindergartens, an aid post and the dispensary – completed during that time. More than $270,000 from the partnership was spent building the Aneityum facility.
Members of the 1000-strong island community joined healthcare workers and Save the Children staff at the official opening yesterday. Many had been involved in the construction process, hauling bags of cement and coral from a transport barge and digging the holes for the building’s foundation.