Lives lost over costly treatments

Letters

ONE of the daily newspapers ran sad stories of two more patients who are seeking overseas lifesaving treatment.
One is about a cancer patient looking for K200,000 and the other patient with arteriovenous malformation (AVM) condition seeking K120,000.
Only because of their family and public financial support were they able to get the treatment but the cancer patient is appealing for more financial help to complete his treatments.
Given these exorbitant costs, one can roughly estimate the number of ordinary Papua New Guinean lives that could have been saved had the services and facilities been available at our public hospitals.
Though the Lae Cancer Unit had the particular equipment to treat the cancer patient it was out of service, which forced this patient to go overseas and pay the hefty fee.
Without the timely financial support they too may have ended up simply as statistics like many before them.
Do we have to wait another 41 years before such treatments are available at Port Moresby General Hospital and Angau Memorial Hospital?
These facilities should have been put in place given the billions of kina in revenue that Papua New Guinea has earned since independence.

BT Laskona, Via email