ENB health officers complete training

 By ABIGAIL APINA

HEALTH officers in East New Britain completed a four-day training last Friday based Health on National Health Services Standards (NHSS) for Papua New Guinea 2011-2020.

ENB is the second province in the country after Northern to take on the training since the establishment of NHSS.

NHSS executive officer Dr Goa Tau said the training was specifically conducted to identify what services were provided in the rural areas of ENB and benchmarked against the blue print.

He said the training was sanctioned by the National Department of Health and the provincial administration. 

He added that three similar trainings have been conducted already in Northern and two church-run health centres – St Mary Hospital and Nazarene health centre.

Training was focused on service delivery, resources, and monitoring and evaluation.

“Most importantly the team is trying to assess the strength of human resources in the provincial health sector, the service they provide and the facilities they operate in. This includes the equipment they use and the drugs that they distribute, and how referrals are made,” he said.

He said previous trainings revealed many weaknesses and lacking areas, including strengths in the health sector.

Tau said one of the weakness identified was poor recording and filing of data.

He added there had to be an improvement in this as it was essential for planning purposes.

He said with staffing, time management was an issue that needed to be addressed effectively.

“We are now trying to translate papers into reality,” he said.

It is understood that the ENB training involved 50 participants from all four districts – Pomio, Gazelle, Rabaul and Kokopo, headed by the provincial health adviser Nicholas Larme.

These were nursing officers, doctors, health extension officers and community health officers.

“NHSS is Papua New Guinea driven, it is about health for all,” Tau said.