Investing in health vital

THE Health Department, over the years, has not delivered key deliverables.
Some of the deliverables not delivered include failing to deliver cancer services at Angau Hospital and immunisation rates have declined, which resulted in polio outbreak in PNG.
That is from the Health secretary Pascoe Kase.
Makes one wonder what took the good secretary this long to admit that there is a crises in the health system.
Wikipedia says a health crisis or public health crisis is a difficult situation or complex health system that affects humans in one or more geographic areas (mainly occurred in natural hazards), from a particular locality to encompass the entire planet.
Health crises generally have significant impacts on community health, loss of life, and on the economy.
They may result from disease, industrial processes or poor policy.
World Health reports have always pointed out three fundamental objectives of health systems – improving the health of the populations they serve, responding to people’s expectations, and providing financial protection against costs due to illness.
We have a crises in the health system.
Our health systems face tough and complex challenges, in part derived from new pressures, such as ageing populations, growing prevalence of chronic illnesses including the procurement and distribution of medical supplies.
The medical supplies procurement, management and distribution has been an ongoing system wide challenge for many years.

It is not a new issue. The issues at hand will not be fixed overnight.
There are many reasons why medicines may not be available in some of our health facilities, poor planning and forecasting for medicines needs, due to lack of consumption data by health facilities; irregular and timely releases of funds; delays in tenders and procurement processes; stealing of medicines; lack of timely ordering by health facilities; delays and timely placing of orders by the department. A number of practices in the procurement processes have been changed to ensure transparency and efficiency in the procurement and processing of orders and payments.
All these boils down to the enforcement of the policy and making it fail.
The dynamic nature of the health field, international and regional advancements in the health sector, growing populations as well as potential health threats either predicted or not, are conditions that point out the necessity to organise health systems towards.
Human factor plays a major role when it comes to organising health crisis management.
The cornerstone of a preparedness system is the personality of the manager.
Investment in health is not only a desirable, but also an essential priority for most societies.
Much of the work needs to be undertaken to providing policymakers with the evidence they need to promote more value for money in the health sector, while ensuring universal access, equity and raising quality of care.
Health systems need financing and investment to improve their performance.
Health performance and economic performance are interlinked.
Policy choices cannot be taken lightly.
A basic message has emerged: investments in health and the design of health financing policies should be addressed in terms of the interaction between health and the economy.