Carrying out of health plans not effective: Dakulala

THE implementation of health plans to address the large number of healthcare challenges in Papua New Guinea is not effective, officials say.
Health Department deputy secretary Dr Paison Dakulala said the challenges within the health sector were related to the public health, the health system and the wider population.
He said non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and cancer were increasing and had become a serious public health issue.
Dakulala said this was in addition to the high prevalence of communicable diseases like tuberculosis (TB), malaria and HIV/AIDS which had been around for years and malnutrition.
He said the cause of all these diseases could be attributed to a number of factors and the human resource within the health sector was an issue, in addition to the lack of infrastructure.
“According to our National Health Service standards, we are supposed to have a 17,000 workforce but that number has gone down to less than 15,000 workforce for the whole country,” he said.
Dakulala said half of the current workforce was reaching the age of retirement.