Marape says jobs assured for doctors and nurses

By SAMANTHA KATI and ZINA KOIM
PRIME Minister James Marape yesterday indicated to 356 graduates from the School of Medicine and Health Science Faculty of the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) that they do not need to look for jobs.
“Government will pick you up because we need more nurses and more doctors in our country,” he said.
“Employment is almost guaranteed for every one of you in this school (School of Medicine and Health Science) and that’s more than enough,” he said.
Acting vice-chancellor of the UPNG Dr Cecelia Nembou said the majority of the women graduates were nurses.
“Nurses make up the majority of women graduates in the SMHS in the bachelor of general specialist academic and professional awards for nurses,” she said.
She said nearly of 350 who graduated with Masters, higher diplomas, diplomas and certificates had received their certificates, 191 were women.
She commended the work of the nurses and said they were key people.
“I believe that nurses are the backbone of health services in this country,” she said.
“Today, I wish to acknowledge in a special way, the work that nurses do without the nurses in health services in this country.
“The health services in this country would literally collapse.
“So I extend a very big thank you to all the nurses in service and congratulate those who are graduating.
“Some of you are fortunate enough to have landed a job immediately after the final exams in 2023 while others are still searching for jobs,” she said.
Marape said over the past three years, the Government had given more than K40 million in the endeavour to ramp up more capacity at the university, especially the School of Medicine and Health Science.
“Our country envisages to produce enough doctors and nurses and clinical workers and our statistics today shows that we are lagging behind,” he said.
“Today, one doctor, to 17,000 Papua New Guineans, and that is not good enough,” he said.
Marape said World Health Organization (WHO) says it a must to have one doctor to 1,000 and so as part of medium term development plan four Government wants to ramp up.
“Ramp up the number of doctors, nurses and clinicians we produce that must be equivalent or equal to world-class ratio,” he said.
“As WHO says, one is to 1,000, we are a long way away from this, but we’ve made some progress and I want to indicate to all of you and to university faculties and university council that we are committed to this cause.”
He encouraged the university council and everyone to work together and embrace the idea of a stand-alone medical university.
“It is not a bad idea, if you embrace this and how we could maintain partnership with the science faculty at the university and for us to ramp up our efforts to train more doctors so that we can fill in this gap,” he said.