By VERONICA MANUK
MALARIA remains the No.1 killer disease in New Ireland and other parts of the country but more money and manpower are instread being put into HIV/AIDS with little success rating.
This was the message to foreign development partners by the member for Namatanai and shadow Minister for Internal Affairs, Culture and Tourism, Byron Chan at the farewell dinner to conclude the three-day consultation summit in Kavieng last week.
Mr Chan said this reflects a disservice in the administration of the foreign aid programme.
“When you see the amount of external aid flowing in, large amounts of money and manpower go to HIV/AIDS with very little success rate while malaria campaign hardly receives donor funding that it kills more people than HIV/AIDS,”Mr Chan said.
The summit also gave the opportunity to Governor Sir Julius and his government to present copies of their vision and mission document called the “Malagan declaration”.
Mr Chan said the government needs the donor’s support to achieve their vision.
Meanwhile, the summit ended successfully with the signing of the Kavieng declaration, a guiding framework, under which all foreign development partners would work together with the PNG Government to target projects interventions and funding.
That was a deviation from the past where development partners had the flexibility to decide their own development agendas and targets.