Doctor urges shake up in health delivery

 SERVICE provision for HIV in East New Britain is pretty low and is a major concern for health authorities at the national level and development partners, UNICEF HIV specialist Dr Justine Nangkinga said.

She highlighted that at the conclusion of a three-day workshop for health managers in Kokopo last week.

Nangkinga said two major issues identified in ENB were that many people did not know their status so they could not access services.

“We are starting a very few people on treatment,” she said.

According to statistics, only 50 people who were HIV positive were registered for treatment in ENB in 2013.

“There are many people who are missing out. 

“We estimate that about 50 per cent are missing out,” Nangkinga said.

“If they do not receive treatment, they will get other infections and their immunity will decrease and they will transmit the infection to other people,” she said.

Nangkinga said if particular emphasis was put on pregnant women, they would need to identify the ones who were HIV positive and start them on treatment. But in 2014, no one was started on treatment. 

“This is a great concern for us at the national level and development partners, that HIV service provision in ENB is very low,” she said.

“It is true that HIV prevalence is very low in ENB but that does not mean we remain complacent.”

Nangkinga said the other issue they were addressing was how to ensure that people who were HIV infected received anti-retroviral drugs.  

UNICEF and other development partners were supporting provinces with a high burden of HIV to scale up HIV interventions and ENB was supported with coverage.

The purpose of the workshop was to empower health managers on how to improve service provision and improve coordination of services.

“We hope that managers will go out with information on where the problem is for ENB and how to address it,”  Nangkinga said.

She said for pregnant women and their spouses, they would like health managers in ENB to integrate HIV care and treatment, such that mothers who attended antenatal clinics got tested and knew their status.