Health minister issues reminder

THE government is providing the health sector with more opportunities, including the K350 million allocated for the redevelopment of hospitals.
Health and HIV/AIDS Minister Jamie Maxtone-Graham told parliament yesterday the challenge was now on the health sector to spend the money effectively to rebuild and furnish facilities with the resources they needed.
Maxtone-Graham said for a population of seven million people, there were only 2,746 facilities.
These included 1,998 aid posts, 551 health centres, 73 urban clinics, nine district hospitals, 14 provincial hospitals, four regional hospitals and a national referral hospital in Port Moresby.
He said more than 40% of the facilities were managed by Christian health services with funding from the government.
He said in 2010, appropriations for the Department of Health were less than the original allocations and significant difficulty was experienced in the expenditure of development funds received – linked at least partially to a lack of capacity to manage large-scale infrastructure projects.