Free health care headed for disaster

 THE head of obstetrics and gynaecology at the School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dr Glen Mola made a heart-felt plea to the National Government this week. 

The government’s healthcare policy is putting immense pressure on the Port Moresby General Hospital and the situation is reaching breaking point, he said. 

If nothing drastic is done in terms of building capacity in staffing, equipment, infrastructure and medicines then Mola’s claim that “if there is no available service (or the available service is low quality) then free service does not benefit anyone”, will dog the government and make the creators of the free healthcare policy not only look inept, incompetent and short-sighted, but make them culpable for the deaths that occur, particularly in the hospital’s maternity ward. 

Mola, who is closely associated with that ward on a daily basis, said the state must act swiftly to correct the massive imbalance in the numbers of women seeking medical attention for pre- and post-natal care and the hospital’s capacity to treat and manage the increase. 

He said last year alone the maternity wing of the Port Moresby General Hospital cared for nearly 15,000 women who came to deliver their babies, a 10 per cent increase from 2012. 

Compounding the problem is that the nursing director’s report for 2013 states that staffing levels were only 52 per cent of the what should have been provided to meet the national standards for the care of women in labour. 

The Port Moresby General Hospital is in a situation where it is failing its own checks and balances. Mola laid the cause of this on the government’s free healthcare policy, a government initiative that is evidently failing the people it is supposed to serve and benefit. 

Capacity is at the crux of the problem. The government demonstrated an acute lack of foresight by implementing their policy too quickly, even though the public healthcare system was unable to meet the rise in demand for its services. 

“Last week we ran out of oxytocin – the medicine that all women are meant to receive after the birth of their babies to prevent excessive bleeding. After-birth bleeding is the most common cause of maternal death in PNG. The week before we ran out of the drug we use to reduce blood pressure in women with dangerous high blood pressure in labour. The lack of these vital medicines undoubtedly leads to unnecessary maternal deaths in our national referral hospital,” Mola said in a statement. 

No one wants to read harrowing stories of mothers delivering babies on hospital floors and toilets, or of mothers dying because of a shortage of medicines or of babies dying because there were not enough staff numbers to give each delivery the attention it deserves.

The government has exacerbated the ongoing problem of limited healthcare by causing a rush for free health services. Would it not have been better to upgrade the system before taking on the load? Is that not common sense? It seems the government wants results overnight or at least before the next election but at what cost?

If things continue the way they are then there will be more deaths at the POM Gen. The statistics are telling. According to Mola the rate of infant death in women who attended antenatal clinics (ANC) was 1.9 per cent in 2013 and 2.8 per cent overall. However, in January these figures rose to 3.5 per cent in those who had attended ANC and 4.7 per cent overall. That was an 80 per cent increase.

More mothers and babies will be at risk because they will not get the level of care they need. 

That will not be their fault or the hospital’s fault. 

The blame will rest squarely on the state. Adequate healthcare for all was a problem before the advent of the free healthcare policy and one can only wonder how people managed but if the government is bent on seeing this policy through then surely it must take heed of what the experts are saying. 

Mola’s concerns cannot be dismissed or ignored or toned down. The question now is what will the state do or better yet what are they going to do now to stem the tide? Can they call back free healthcare? Can they scale it down? Will they flush in more money to build capacity (is this realistic in a short space of time)? 

The free healthcare policy is already causing more headaches then it is worth, and these are definitely not teething problems.