Australian student doctor prefers PNG for training

National, Normal
Source:

The National, Wednesday 29th August, 2012

A TRAINEE Australian doctor is preparing for the experience of a lifetime when he undertakes a 11-week work placement at a hospital in the country.
Jonathan Messing, who grew up on Oldfield Road, Maidenhead, Queensland, is approaching the end of a six-year course at Imperial College in London where he studies medicine.
As a requirement of his studies he must complete a work placement to get real life experience of working in a hospital.
He will be travelling to Kavieng, in April next year.
The 23-year-old, who attended St Mary’s Catholic Primary School, on Cookham Road, decided to pick Papua New Guinea after carrying out research and talking to past students who had completed a placement in the country.
“They are really under-staffed and under-equipped. I thought I would be really able to do something,” he said.
As part of the trip he has arranged to visit a remote community.
He will be providing medical help and handing out supplies to people in the local community that he will be attached to.
The former 19th Maidenhead Scout group member is now appealing for sponsors to help fund his trip.
He will be staying with a local family but said he still needed financial assistance to be able to carry out his life-saving work. – Maidenhead Advertiser