More doctors needed

By DOROTHY MARK
CONCERN has been raised over the need for more doctors in the country, with some heavily populated areas in Gulf and Western having none at all, a medical symposium has been told.
PNG Society of Rural and Remote Health president Dr David Mills told the week-long national medical symposium, which began in Madang yesterday, that the country had a ratio of one doctor to 20,000 people.
Mills told the symposium, which is focusing on rural health, that half the total number of the doctors in the country were based in the National Capital District. Others were spread around the country.
“PNG’s health story is a rural health story. We need more doctors and we need to train more doctors,” he said.
Mills said certain local level governments, which had more than 20,000 people in provinces such as Gulf and Western, did not any doctor.
He said doctors in the country through the National Doctors’ Association had strong influence and power to “move things”. But the question was how that power could be used to improve rural health.
He viewed doctors as good advocators “in terms of getting the Government to listen to them”. So moving doctors to the rural areas is the key to the rural health improvement, he said.
He referred to doctors as noise makers.
“Every doctor here can do that. It doesn’t matter that you don’t have the equipment to work. You can advocate. We can all do that. And that’s the challenge I am throwing at you,” he said.
Meanwhile, Health and HIV-AIDS Minister Sir Puka Temu also launched a book titled The last doctor, by Dr Rebecca Williams, 28, of Kompiam Hospital in Enga. Sir Puka said he was inspired by the inspiriting stories of doctors which Williams complied.
He said the book would “inspire our young and upcoming doctors to serve our people in rural aid posts”.
Williams said many doctors underwent training at the Kompiam Hospital and she put together the book “to encourage and inspire young doctors to love their profession more and serve wholeheartedly”.
She is from East Sepik. Her mother is a nurse in Mt Hagen and her father works at the Mt Hagen medical store.
She told of how she had to run after a pregnant woman into a bush to help her deliver her baby.
“It challenged me to see my profession differently, and it also inspired me to compile this book,” she said.