Northern gets new health boss

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By HELEN TARAWA
Newly-appointed Northern provincial health authority (NHPA) chairman Eric Mesak will look at addressing the aging workforce as one of his key priority areas.
Mesak, pictured, an employee of the New Britain Palm Oil Ltd’s Higaturu Oil Palm, will head the authority for the next five years.
He said the authority had an ageing workforce.
“Their ability has already gone so it becomes challenging for us when we want to drive changes,” Mesak said.
“This is something that becomes my priority.
“I want to also see what the political vision the three MPs have, so we can put them into the tangible working plans so we can pull all the resources together.” He said his first task was to look at restructuring of the hospital, provincial health strategic plan and district health plan.
“Most of the hospitals in the rural areas have shut down because of (lack of) logistics support,” Mesak said. “Within this three-month window period, we will put together all the processes and identify the issues. We will make them become a tangible working plan and cascade all these throughout the management.
“Each respective manager must know what to do. All managers must have their key results areas to work on.
“We will have a key performance indicators drafted out so they know what their best practices are going to be.
“My job is to sit down, get the reports, analyse the reports and look at the statistics.”
Other board members are deputy secretary health policies Elva Lionel as department representative, Zacharias Samota (deputy chairman and district representative), Charlie Paine, Esmie Sinapa (business), Roger Baboa (church health services), Debora Emboge(women and children) and Newman Cuthbert and Cecil Siembo (community).
They were sworn in soon after the declaration of the authority on Friday.