Healthcare delivery

THE delivery of health services in Papua New Guinea can be described as chaotic despite being the second biggest recipient of the national budget over the decades.
Futuristic plans encapsulating the dynamics of the country’s demographic progress as well as the diversifying health conditions are clearly stipulated in the voluminous health plans where they end.
The health planners bear the responsibility of appropriating government money on critical Programme evaluation is a vital instrument in assessing programme effectiveness and it is believed that this department has little data to measure its performance in areas of human capital and their appropriateness within the system.
The Divine Word rural doctors’ programme will add another cadre of clinicians, bringing them to six within the system.
In our system, the five categories of clinicians in hierarchical order would be community health workers, nurse aides and nursing, health extension and medical officers.
Their usefulness within the system lies on the specific levels of training they received as intended by the planners.
It is vital to evaluate the relevance of each cadre within the context of training.
For instance, 95 per cent of the clinicians’ training curriculum centres round a patient’s examination, diagnosis and treatment. However, in retrospect, 95 per cent of health institutions are run by clinicians as managers spending quality time engaged in duties alien to patient care.
In other words, these clinicians holding management positions are clearly misplaced, and their training have been a waste on public funds. Can a causal relationship be drawn between what is described and the current chaos within the health system in general?
My observation is that 98 per cent of our health-service-seeking population meet a nurse on the first instance, whether in the rural or urban setting.
Given that University of PNG medical graduates aren’t attracted much to the rural health settings, a possible cost-effective measure would be to boost the nursing training curriculum to equip nurses with the skills to perform as frontline little doctors.

Mexy Kakazo
Goroka