Outreach patrol team delivers health services to villagers

A young mother is fortunate to be alive after giving birth along a lonely forest track in remote Fogomaiyu, Southern Highlands, recently.
Her rescue came from an outreach patrol team comprising workers from the Oil Search Foundation, Waro Health Facility and Marie Stopes.
The team was conducting a three-day clinic on immunisation, family planning awareness and basic health service delivery to the remote Fogomaiyu community, made up of four villages.
Two days into the patrol, they received word of the young mother who had undergone an unsupervised delivery along a track while on her way to the clinic.
She was weak, bleeding and in a state of shock. The team quickly responded with emergency medical care and stabilised her condition.
Papua New Guinean communities experience high maternal and infant mortality largely due to poor access to medical services during pregnancy and birth. Regular and quality outreach is essential to expanding the reach of health service delivery to remote villages.
By December of last year, the Oil Search Foundation (OSF) had conducted about 2000 outreach clinics and patrols with its health partners in local government and faith based organisations in Hela, Southern Highlands and Kikori in Gulf.
“It also provided over 60,000 immunisations in these provinces.”