By ENNIO KUBLE
A new curriculum has been introduced by PNG-based health specialists for the Pacific region to train health workers on safe motherhood.
The working group that developed the curriculum included PNG’s own gynaecologist Prof Glen Mola and two other specialists, Dr Miriam O’Connor and World Health Organisation’s Geoff Clark.
The programme had been designed to improve the safety of Pacific Island countries’ mothers and babies during pregnancy and childbirth.
Known as the Pacific Emergency Obstetric Care programme (PEmOC) it aims to lower the death and injury rate to mothers and babies through improving the quality of emergency care that was delivered to mothers during their pregnancy and labour and to the post partum care delivered to both mothers and babies.
The programme was an initiative of the Pacific Society for reproductive health/Royal Australian and New Gynaecologists (RANZCOG) in collaboration with the World Health Organisation.
The working group also identified some key challenges to mother and baby safety in the region.
The challenges are: lack of access to a formalised emergency obstetric care system; a lack of capacity to distribute health care resources to areas of need; insufficient capacity within the healthcare workforce (nurses, midwives, doctors) to deal with obstetric emergencies; and the isolation of many health care workers resulting in poor access to both emergency obstetric care training and professional support.
The PEmOC programme aims not only to strengthen the clinical skills of current obstetric care and the capacity of current health care workers to train other health care workers in PEmOC in knowledge and skills.
The programme underwent pilot testing in Port Moresby with a group of midwifery educators.
Feedback from this group was positive, particularly stressing the value of integrating theoretical and practical training in the programme.
A further course was delivered last October in Madang and another in December in Port Moresby that trained local facilitators of the programme.
The participants were obstetricians and midwives from the four regions of Papua New Guinea. 
It was proposed that these national facilitators would conduct PEmOC training in their regions for other health care workers. 
Dates have not been set yet for the training.