Global AIDS - Papua New Guinea

January 26, 2004 - AIDS could wipe out 1/3 of PNG
Story: Malum Nalu/ Post-Courier.

The High Commissioner said that 650 people were dying of AIDS every day in Southern Africa. It is estimated that one-third of Southern Africa could be wiped out if the trend continues.

"… the situation here suggests to me that unless something drastic is done, in 12 years time, we’ll be sitting here talking about a crisis, within PNG, like in South Africa, Zambia, Botswana, whichever country you want to chose,” Mr Gordon-Macleod said. So that is the position I’m coming from. The situation is one where, to quote Nelson Mandela, on the first of December last year, ‘we need to treat AIDS as a global battle from nature against the survival of humanity. If we treat it as a war, like Mr Mandela suggests, then we should be dealing with it as if dealing with the urgency of a war. And that means mobilising the people urgently, mobilising the resources, mobilising the population to combat the onslaught of nature".

“The impression I get is that there is quite a lot going on here but still there is a lack of real urgency. And what we have in Papua New Guinea is a situation that is very like Southern Africa. You have the issues of modern versus traditional, you have the tribal or clan structures, each with their different cultural practices. You have the difficult geography of Papua New Guinea, which makes it even more difficult to deliver health services or health education in the remote areas. Many people in remote areas are free from HIV at the moment but all you need is one person to return there and to infect the whole population — and there are no structures there to contain the spread in that particular area. I personally feel very committed to the situation here. I have seen what it has already done in Southern Africa.”

Mr Gordon-Macleod visited a village outside Goroka towards the end of last year and was struck when he found out that five young people had recently died from AIDS. "I visited, for example, the Eastern Highlands Province in December where I spent an hour-and-a-half with a family in a village some miles from Goroka, who had lost their 2-year-old son to AIDS,” he continued. "He was their only hope because he was the only member of their family who had gone to high school. I tried to find out a bit more about the impact within their village, thinking that his death was the only death. Then I was told that last year, there were four other deaths in this one village: A 21-year-old girl and 20, 22- year-old people. That one little incident alone suggests to me that the situation is being underreported.”

Mr Gordon-Macleod also expressed concern about the way AIDS tests were being carried out in PNG. "Another problem seems to be the problem of AIDS testing,” he said. “When I visited a district health clinic in Eastern Highlands Province, I asked how they dealt with possible AIDS cases and HIV/AIDS cases. They said they had a simple test, which was not a confirmatory test but was a test that made them see whether there was a risk. And the blood sample then went to the hospital in Goroka where they tested it. But under legislation, which I think is normal practice in any country, a second test has to be carried out independently of the first to confirm whether or not that person is indeed positive. And that test is carried out in Port Moresby. And I was told that quite a few of the blood samples never reached Port Moresby, or they got lost in Port Moresby or the test came back very late.

And under the existing legislation, for example in Goroka, it could be anyone else, somebody who has a positive test or hasn’t had a confirmatory test, I understand, so I was told in Goroka anyway, you cannot then tell the person that they’re positive and therefore you cannot counsel them. And counselling is about how to come to terms with HIV and how you should take care not to spread it to others.”

The British Government is involved in some projects helping AIDS victims in PNG and Mr Gordon-Macleod is pushing for more funding and assistance. “We have been assisting a number of projects at the grassroots level, for example there is a project outside of Goroka, which is an intermediate technology project, which is providing simple technology for people suffering from HIV: shower buckets, portable toilets and things like that,” he said. They don’t sound very exciting but they’re very fundamental to someone who is so weak they cannot get up and go more than two metres without falling over. People dying of AIDS need to have some dignity in their lives".

“I’m trying to look at the scope for some limited funding to share some of the British experiences of dealing with the AIDS crisis or helping deal the AIDS crisis in Southern Africa; some of the experiences and some of the best practices we’ve developed in dealing with all aspects of the crisis.

“So I hope I’m going to be successful and get some extra help there because the message there is there really is no excuse for PNG going the same way as Africa".