Healthcare service appalling

 By SONIA KENU

DELIVERY of healthcare services in PNG have been seriously affected by the lack of proper infrastructure and facilities, health secretary Pascoe Kase says.

He said the current situation resulted from years of neglect and maintenance, which posed a major challenge for the health authorities.

Kase said this when addressing the Christian Health Services national conference yesterday.

He added that the O’Neill government was focused on rebuilding health infrastructures and facilities.

“The country is currently facing a critical shortage of its health workforce through aging workforce attrition due to prolonged inability of providing proper human resource planning for replacement,” Kase said. 

“Health workers’ training is an important area that was also overlooked. 

“Under-funding of health service delivery over the years was seen as a major challenge as it resulted in under payment of church health workers and limited stock of medical equipment supplies.” 

He said government funding for medical supplies had improved and development partners continued to support with funding and technical advice on health programmes.  

“AusAID continues to heavily supplement medical supplies this year while Global Fund and other private sectors have invested to assist the department and provinces in implementing malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV programmes,” Kase said.

“Through the programmes, distribution and usage of impregnated mosquito nets  have seen a reduction in malaria incidences.”