No obstetrician irks Amet

MADANG Governor Sir Arnold Amet has expressed disappointment at the Health Department for the delay in appointing an obstetrician to be based at the Modilon Hospital.
He said while the replacement was in the process, pregnant women were dying of complications from child birth.
The department had recalled the only obstetrician serving at the hospital, Dr Lahui Geita, back to headquarters to take up the maternal health adviser’s post last year to assist in putting together the ministerial task force report, on maternal health in PNG.
Sir Arnold was alarmed at the maternal mortality rate in the report, adding that it was spiralling
out of control.
“I’m absolutely disgusted that there is no obstetrician at Modilon hospital,” he told a parliamentary forum on safe motherhood at parliament yesterday.
“In the 2011 national budget, health has funding allocated for Cuban doctors. I don’t care where they come from whether they are Cuban or Chinese, we need doctors,” he said.
Sir Arnold also commented on the effects the outcome-based education (OBE) system had on children, particularly those in Grade 8.
He said Health and Education were correlated and that the country would not be healthy and educated if children were pushed out from school as early as Grade 8.
Sir Arnold referred to a part of the report that highlighted the group of women who were marginalised and had special needs and that included women who had children when they were at the “extremes” of the reproductive age range, women who had more than five pregnancies and women who had their pregnancies less than two years apart.
He said these groups included young adolescent girls who were pushed out from Grade 8.
Sir Arnold added that these young girls and women were vulnerable to HIV, STI (sexually transmitted infections) and could be another statistic to the maternal mortality.