PNG health standards slammed

From correspondents in Port Moresby
03feb06

SOME Papua New Guineans have to walk four days for medical help when 20 years ago nobody was expected to walk more than four hours to an aid post, PNG's corruption watchdog said.

Transparency International PNG (TI) says the country's standard of health delivery has collapsed since the mid-1980s because of a combination of corruption and bad management within the health service.
About 50 per cent of medical aid posts operating at PNG's independence in 1975 were now defunct, said TI chairman Mike Manning commenting on this week's international launch of TI's Global Corruption Report focused on health.

He said some doctors at a Port hospital were running private clinics where they seemed to be selling medicine, describing the practice as a form of corruption.

In the 1980s nobody was supposed to be more than four hours walk away from primary health care, he said in Port Moresby.

"Now often it's four days. The standard of delivery has completely collapsed between the eighties and now."

The chances of survival for people with malaria or other serious ailments were very poor if they had to walk for days on end from their remote villages, Mr Manning said.

Health service deterioration was one of the reasons life expectancy in PNG was much lower than other poorer countries in the Pacific, he said.

Infant mortality was also rising and an HIV/AIDS epidemic posed a huge threat.

Aid posts, health clinics and even Port Moresby General Hospital regularly ran out of medicines and one of the reasons was a thriving black market in government-supplied medicines, Mr Manning said.

Some doctors at the Port Moresby General Hospital ran private clinics on the side where they seemed to have medicines for sale when the general hospital had none, he said.

"This of course is a form of corruption."

The losers were poor Papua New Guineans who did not even know they were entitled to aid posts and free medicines, Mr Manning said.

"Because they don't know, when they go to a hospital or a clinic and someone says they have to pay, they pay."

Donors such as AusAID arranged drug kits for remote aid posts but they often did not get there.

"Somewhere along the line the system is breaking down and because of the black market at least some of it is leaking out through corrupt measures."

Villagers had to be informed about their health rights and how to put pressure on local representatives to ensure service delivery, Mr Manning said.

Accordingly, TI aimed to pursue a three-year project which would include displaying local health and education budgets at aid posts, clinics and schools so people knew their entitlements.

"It's a case of empowering the poor by just telling them what their rights are."

Mr Manning called on the PNG government to recognise the problem of corruption and bad management within the health service and do something about it.