WE commend the new Health Minister for his enthusiasm and his determination to revive the rural health clinic network and return health services to the people. At the same time he may find that there is a gulf between identifying the problems and providing rapid and comprehensive solutions to them.
Mr Zibe was recently taken on a guided tour of Angau Memorial Hospital. Accompanied by the hospital’s chief executive officer, he saw first hand the sad state of the termite-infested hospital.
The minister had earlier toured Angau in company with Morobe Governor Luther Wenge and the Chinese Ambassador. The latter undertook to consult his home government about the possibility of assisting with the rehabilitation of the historic hospital.
The costs of rebuilding Angau and creating a facility capable of handling tens of thousands of patients each year are astronomical. Yet the alternative – to allow the decaying facility to become unusable – is a denial of the rights of our people to medical attention.
We don’t support those who take situations such as Angau and use them to conduct witch hunts to meet their own agendas. Nevertheless, it is relevant to ask some simple questions about this vital health facility.
How did Angau reach its present condition?
What actions did the members of the hospital board of management take to address the maintenance of the facility?
Did the provincial government adequately support Angau?
Were the Health department and the National Government alerted to the decay of the hospital?
If so, what was their response?
The Health department, the Angau board of management, the Morobe provincial government and the National Government are all responsible for the maintenance and operations of the hospital. And it is starkly apparent that some or all of those instrumentalities signally failed to meet their obligations to the people.
We can recall a welter of finger-pointing by representatives of all the bodies mentioned. Blame for the state of Angau was splashed around with abandon, but still very little was done.
The National has been in the forefront of attempts to get the radio-therapy equipment at Angau replaced. Prior to the recent election, definite undertakings were made by the outgoing government to fund and install that desperately needed equipment should it be returned to power.
We were therefore alarmed by Mr Zibe’s apparent promise to “look into acquiring a new cancer machine” for Angau. The Angau cancer unit has been without a cobalt machine for 11 years.
And during that time successive governments have made and broken countless promises to attend to the matter. Our inquiries suggest that adequate basic equipment to get the unit once again fully operational could be purchased for some K6 million.
In terms of PNG government budgets, that amount is peanuts. We’re mindful of the fact that members of the House have demanded sums of up to K5 million for individual electorate or slush funds.
The new Health minister has also targeted the continuity of drug supplies as a major issue he intends to address. Good – one of the most tragic scenarios in PNG has been the on-again, off-again nature of life saving drug supplies.
But we note that the minister is apparently inclined to blame the hospitals for these shortfalls. Mr Zibe is quoted as saying that “hospitals must establish their annual requirements and then plan for 12 months supply ... so we ensure that drugs don’t run out ...”
The minister may well find that such fine tuning in terms of drug supplies simply cannot be maintained. For example, sudden outbreaks of exotic influenza strains from overseas or an epidemic of infantile measles could skew pre-determined orders of drug supplies significantly.
And what of those endemic diseases that have struck PNG again with renewed vigour? We’re referring to tuberculosis and malaria. Can accurate quantities of these drugs be predicted?
And then there’s HIV/AIDS. Of all the threats to health in PNG, this intruder must be the most dangerous – yet we are not even on the threshold of establishing accurate figures of those infected, let alone being able to predict figures for next year or next decade.
Minister Zibe faces an enormous task in re-inventing the Health department and its services.