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7th Bilateral Health Summit gets a brief history of healthcare in territory

ausage@samoanews.com

This Samoa News photo shows an old picture of the Hospital of American Samoa in Utulei, where currently, The AP Executive Office Building is located and the photo was part of a slide show by Health Department’s Dr. Peni Biukoto at yesterday’s day-two of the 7th Bilateral Health Summit at the Gov. H. Rex Lee Auditorium.

Buikoto shared with summit participants a brief history of health services in the territory, along with a slide show of photos.

He explained that the former health services in the territory started when Dr. Blackwell established a temporary dispensary after Flag Day in 1900 at Fagatogo, and the first permanent dispensary built by funds from the federal government in Fagatogo was opened in 1906.

The Hospital of American Samoa was opened in 1912 and the territory’s Public Health Department in 1914, he said adding that based on information in the library, the first community dispensary opened in Leone village and Ta’u island in 1920; followed in 1921 with community dispensaries in Amouli village and Ofu island.

In World War II, there was a mobile hospital in Mapusaga and then the Hospital of American Samoa was shifted from Fagatogo to Utulei in 1946, which is the same year that a 14-bed hospital was opened in Ta’u. And according to information the Ta’u hospital was able to perform cesarean section operations.

Then in 1968 the Hospital of American Samoa was moved to Fagaalu, where it is now known as the LBJ Medical Center - which was a newly built hospital at the time.

Among the pictures in the slide show was the Fagatogo dispensary, with a section for Samoan patients, who preferred a Samoan fale, and one also of the 14-bed hospital in Ta’u island.

Biukoto said that the two-story hospital that was in Utulei “was the first hospital in the Pacific that had an elevator.”