Ausmat transports supplies to most affected provinces

THE Australian Medical Assistance Team (Ausmat) has started transporting essential supplies for the Coronavirus (Covid-19) to 10 most affected provinces.
At the weekend, they dropped these supplies off in Goroka in the Eastern Highlands, Lae in Morobe and Mt Hagen in Western Highlands.
There were five bricks (lots) containing these supplies in Mt Hagen which were for Western Highlands, Southern Highlands, Jiwaka, Chimbu and Enga.
There are two more bricks – for NCD and Central – to be delivered by road.
Each of the provinces will be receiving three-tonnes of supplies each, comprising personal protective equipment, oxygen concentrators and essential medicines which will be needed in surges of cases.
A Royal Australian Air Force cargo aircraft is used in transporting the supplies.
Ausmat came into the country three weeks ago on the request of the PNG Government to help address the Covid-19 pandemic.
Most of the cargo is taken from the National Control Centre warehouse in Port Moresby, but there’s also some supplies brought by the Ausmat team for different hospitals.
There are currently eight clinical members of the Ausmat team in the country.
“We also brought logistics experts. The Ausmat team travelled to Goroka with a biomedical engineer who is helping the Goroka General Hospital with checking its installation of oxygen concentrators and maintenance of these equipment so that they are working properly,’’ said team leader Dr Mark Little.
“In this surge we are seeing many people getting ill, we are helping to make sure IPC (infection prevention and control) is good,’’ Dr Little said.
“This (surge) is a lot worse. It has lots of deaths. The good news, however, is that compared to last week, Goroka looks better, although it is in a bad situation.’’
Dr Little and John Piispanen said they were impressed with the staff in Goroka General Hospital.
“They’re organised. The leadership there is very good,’’ said Dr Little and attributed this partly to the domestic emergency medical team headed by Dr Gary Nou.