Improvement in PNG’s health sector: Kapavore

THE country has made improvements to its health sector in line with the PNG Vision 2050 and National Health Plan 2011-2020, an official says.
Elias Kapavore, the chairman of the Special Parliamentary Committee for Public Sector Reform and Services, told a meeting of Asia-Pacific parliamentarians forum on global health that a long-term strategy was formulated in 2007.
“Considering PNG’s position on the United Nations Human Development Index (127 out of 188 countries in 2009), the National Executive Council decided to develop a framework for a long-term strategy in 2007 that resulted in the PNG Strategic Vision 2010-2050,” he said.
Kapavore said the goal was for Papua New Guineans to be smart, wise, fair and happy with a national mission to be ranked in the top 50 of the UN Human Development Index by 2050.
“PNG position regressed from 127 in 2010 to 147 out of 188 countries in 2015. This is despite the Government committing up to 20 percent of the national budget to both health and education in the past four years,” he said
He said the Government developed 16 specific areas to strengthen the health care system. They include:
l Improving access to and quality of health care;
l developing an efficient and effective public service delivery machinery that is transparent and accountable at all levels; and,
l Ensuring legislation is produced or amended which will enable the Government to deliver on its reform agenda.
“We have achieved an overall progress of 72 per cent on health activities and generally above 70 per cent for the current government,” Kapavore said.
He said progress was made in literacy rates, increase in enrolment of girls in schools due to the tuition fee free policy, improvement in immunisation coverage, reduction in malaria deaths and wider coverage of anti-retro viral drugs.