Hats off to hardworking nurses

LET us pause to acknowledge our hard working medical staff as they set aside May 12 to celebrate International Nurses Day.
In Port Moresby, in particular, these hard workers are doing their best to contain the spread of cholera while elsewhere in the country, their colleagues work under trying conditions to protect the health of men, women and children.
As we commemorate this important day, we note that every country in the world is affected by the rising tide of chronic disease, and the need for access to appropriate, affordable care for people with chronic conditions. The potential for nurses to contribute to improvement in the health of people in the provinces through attention to chronic disease prevention and care has never been greater.
Diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases and cancer are the world’s biggest killers, causing an estimated 35 million deaths each year, according to a WHO report in 2008. Eighty per cent of these deaths occur in low and middle income countries. These diseases are preventable. When they do occur, effective care and management from the earliest stages, can enable those affected to live fulfilling and productive lives.
As well as these “conventional” chronic diseases, the changing pace and nature of other diseases such as HIV/AIDS in Papua New Guinea means that more people in all provinces, as well as globally, need ongoing chronic care.
In PNG, there is an urgent need for nurses to take the initiative and engage with all parts of the community and all sectors to address the growing threat chronic diseases pose to the nation’s health and well-being. We should also throw down the challenge to nurses and others in our hospitals to understand the enormity of the health and health institutional problems that successive governments have promised to fix, and to recognise that with knowledge, courage, vision and commitment nurses throughout the country are well placed to take a lead role.
Nurses throughout the country must take the lead the fight against chronic disease; to act as healthy role models for their families, their patients and their communities; and, through their national nurses associations, to engage with ICN and its partners to advocate for necessary social, economic and political change.
While cholera continues to spread at will in the NCD because of the refusal of residents to adhere to health warnings, the country faces a massive increase in the levels of death and disability resulting from chronic disease.
Chronic diseases have traditionally been associated with the developed world and seen as diseases of affluence affecting mainly the elderly and the wealthy, while attention and resources in the developing world have been focused largely on communicable diseases.
During International Nurses Day, we should also reflect on how far we have come to achieving our Millennium Development Goals in relation to health care. Many people have suggested that the absence of specific targets to address chronic disease in the MDGs was a missed opportunity and that the focus on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria has been at the expense of chronic disease. It is argued that by focusing on these illnesses attention and resources have been diverted away from the impending catastrophe of chronic disease.
It is also a day when the world applauds the nursing fraternity for their 24/7 service to promote health. Healthcare demands are witnessing an upward trend.
Rightly, nurses are the backbone of the healthcare system. As keen facilitators of healthcare, they are a vital link in our hospitals and health centres. Whether it is preventive care or hospital care, nurses are an indispensable part of healthcare. Not only do they carry out prescribed treatment measures, they also provide the balm of comfort and advice to patients during troubled times.
Healthcare demands are growing by the day. This poses newer challenges to the nursing profession, in the form of staff shortages, increasing number of patients, and the need to continuously improve deliverables and quality, amid constraints of time and resources.
In a nutshell, the nursing fraternity is grappling stress from all quarters, notably false promises from the Waigani bureaucracy.