How can we be proud of hosting Apec when women are dying giving birth

I WAS on Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and Loop PNG checking on the arrival in Port Moresby of the world’s powerful leaders for the Apec CEOs’ and leaders’ summits.
The biggest aeroplanes we have seen landed at Jackson International Airport. USA Air Force 2 was also there, and US Vice-President Mike Pence and Chinese President Xi Jinping spent the night in Port Moresby.
It is amazing that Apec’s poorest member just hosted this world leaders’ meeting with the world’s two powerful economies stating different approaches to the way they would help Papua New Guinea, the rest of the Pacific and Apec countries.
Then I am reminded of my weeks leading up to the biggest weekend in PNG’s history. Last week we had two mothers dead on arrival at hospital when they had complications giving birth.
One of them delivered her baby at the village three hours from Kavieng Hospital by boat, but she died about five hours later.
The second one went into labour about one to two hours’ drive from Kavieng Hospital, but she died five hours later with her baby still unborn.
If only these mothers had been attending antenatal clinics and had arrived at the hospital early – in that golden hour – three lives could have been saved. They died because they could not get to hospital on time.
As we go past the middle of November we have already seen two new cases of advanced cervical cancer, adding to the list of many we had seen over the years.
Sadly, I give patients the same message I have been giving: “I am so sorry the cancer is beyond the operative stage and the only radiotherapy unit in PNG is in Lae but has not been functioning, so nothing much we can do here.”
For over four months now we have not been testing pregnant women for syphilis, a common killer of unborn babies.
It is also over two months now that my colleagues and I in surgery have not been doing elective operations (non-urgent) because there is no oxygen available.
I can go on with the many struggles health workers and the people of PNG have been facing daily for over 42 years. These are the same stories that every health facility in the country will tell now and again.
So I ask myself, should I be a proud that PNG hosted these Apec meetings this year when families are mourning the loss of their sisters, mothers and daughters who had died from pregnancy complications and who had died and will die from cervical cancer?
Should I be a proud Papua New Guinean when I am sending our people to buy medicine from private pharmacies, when I tell women to come back in February next year for operation when I, hopefully, will have oxygen?
Please, someone, convince me that I have to be proud PNG hosted the 2018 Apec meetings because I am finding it hard to be proud when I cannot do much for PNG women because I do not have the resources to be able to fully utilise my skills to save women from preventable deaths.

Dr Frank Apamumu
Specialist consultant
Obstetrics and gynaecology
Kavieng Hospital