PNG's health woes

Health

A hospital in Aitape in the West Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea was forced to close down in early 1997 after the then government said there was no funds to maintain it. There was no medicine available and people died, yet at the same time it was negotiating with Sandline International Inc and a few months later managed to find SUSIB million to engage Sandline International.

This was revealed by the director gen eral of the World Health Organisation, Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland in the 1999 World Health Report.

In his forward message to the report Dr Brundtland said in January or February of 1997, the Catholic Church made known the drastic financial crisis it was facing in maintaining the hospital in Aitape, West Sepik Province.

“The Archsbishop of the West Sepik archdiocses then, was none other than the current Archsbishop of Port Moresby. Sick people were being turned out of the hospi tal because there were no medicine and the hospital had to be closed down. The excuse given by the government was that there were no funds. But the then Government of Sir Julius Chan under the able leader ship and guidance of his deputy Christopher Haiveta managed to find SUSIB million from the government cof fers to send to Hong Kong to engage Sandline International Inc,” he said.

“What sort of politician would allow his own people to die and to add insult to injury by hiring mercanaries to kill his own people? Dr Brundtland was reacting to revealations in the report that PNG has one of the worst health situations in the Western Pacific region This stems from statistics which show that over the past 20 years there hasn’t been much improvement to the dependen

cy ratio, fertility rate, infant mortality rate, child immunisation and life expectancy.

He added that the true situation in PNG has been a retrograde step over the last 20 years because the real wage has not increased - the minimum wage was reduced several years ago; export prices for agricul tural commodities have failed; the Kina has not only been devalued but also got a terri ble beating when floated; internal food pro duction has not increased; over dependency on imported Australian rice and other food stuffs and so on.

The report indicates that over a billion people will enter the 21st Century without having benefitted from the health revolution and their lives will remain short and scarreds by disease.

The report says first and furthermost there is a need to greatly reduce the burden of excess mortality and mobiditry suffered by the poor. Secondly, there is the need to counter potential threats to health resulting from economic crisis, unhealthy environ ments or risky behaviour. Thirdly, there is a need to develop more effective health sys tems. In many parts of the world, health sys tems are ill-equipped to cope with present demands, let alone those they will face in the future.

In PNG, the dependency ration shows that in 1978, for every 100 productive indi vidual, there were 81 dependents - people who were beneficiaries of the productive effort of those 100 persons. Some 20 years later, 1998, there appears to be only an 11 per cent improvement.

“These figures are interesting because life expectancy in PNG does not exceed 57 for males and 59 for females,” said Dr Brundtland. On fertility rate, which is calcu lated as the average number of children bom to a woman of productive, PNG still main tains a high rate - even after 20 years.

The report says there was no concerted government action to reduce the number of children per household.

“Second, that there was lack of or mini mal education prodvided to women of pro ductive age. Third, the cultural influence may have far more importance than the value of health, education and improved,” said Dr Brundtland.

Third is the infant mortality rate. In fact all the Pacific Island countries succeeded in attaining over 45 per cent with Samoa being the highest at 70 per cent over the 20-year period. This should reflect directly on the government’s ability or contempt for its people by not prividing better education and health care facilities to its people.

The WHO Report talks about pre ventable diseases caused by tobacco, alco hol addiction and the challenge of malaria.

Whatever the cause, the figures stand out so much that the government must take action to implement a programme for the reduction of the death rates in those specif ic categories to bring it to a comparative level with other countries listed in the table.

The percentage of children in PNG are are immunised against measles shows a shocking truth, says the report.

While there has been a substantial increase in the percentage for most coun tries PNG managed a measly increase of three percent over 10 years between 1987 and 1997 from 37 percent to 40 percent.

“This reflects badly on the government’s health extensions programmes (if any),” Dr Brundtland added.

According to Dr Brundtland, the table on life expectancy showed that there was no priority in government expenditure in the field of increases quality of life, thereby leading to longer life.He added that the challenge for Mr Haiveta, as the new deputy prime minister in the current gov ernment, should be to dedicate his efforts towards proving to the people of PNG that the 1997 Sandline decision was a terrible mistake and he indeed does have a con science, by improving on the 1998 WHO indicators for PNG. ■