PNG plans to review existing health support programmes

PAPUA New Guinea is talking to donor agencies about reviewing the existing health support programmes and coming up with arrangements, which are best for PNG and can be managed by Papua New Guineans, Health Secretary Dr Clement Malau said.
Dr Malau, in an interview with Radio Australia, said World Health Organisation officials including donor partners like Australia and others had been receptive to his plan.
Dr Malau said sometimes, when governments sign an agreement with donor partners to fund a health programme like an immunisation programme, they did not understand how it would work, and thought it was the donors responsibility.
He said they must know how it would benefit the people and whether PNG health workers could continue the programme once the donor partners leave.
“Right now, I’m still concerned about how we negotiate counterpart arrangements for example,” Dr Malau said.
“We need to look very clearly at whether the counterparting is appropriate. If it’s appropriate, how would we manage that?
“In certain circumstances, we do have counterparts that may undermine the capacity of the local person, because of the fact that the counterpart may not be an appropriate match for the national counterpart.”
PNG’s health sector depends heavily on foreign aid to provide basic health services to its six million people.
Australia provides a bigger portion funds through AusAID to prevent the spread of the HIV/AIDS and train health workers.
Dr Malau said he wanted the country’s dependence changed and donor funded programmes that provided basic health care for people as past governments had failed to understand the people’s basic health care needs.
He said senior health officials did not communicate with rural health workers in remote clinics and hospitals about what they lack to provide basic health care to the people.
Dr Malau said there was no official information about the kind of medical drugs, and equipment needed by nurses and doctors.
Basic medical drugs are not reaching the people, because those at the local level are not aware or do not have the capacity to distribute the drugs.