Prevention better than cure

OVER a year ago, I reported that syphilis test kits had run out, and that the consequences of this would be that pregnant women would not get a syphilis test as part of their ‘skelim bel’ check.
If we do not test pregnant women for syphilis, then we do not have the opportunity to treat the positives so that we cannot prevent their baby dying inside.
Syphilis positivity runs at about 1 per cent around the coast and 4-8 per cent in the Highlands: in NCD it is 4 per cent.
We have about 250,000 pregnancies each year in PNG so about 10,000 women are at risk of their baby dying inside from syphilis infection if they are not tested and treated in the antenatal clinic.
We will have no syphilis test kits.
My estimate is that the carelessness of our government on this issue has probably led to the death or disability of up to 5000 babies since the syphilis test kits ran out in November 2016.
Since August, we have also run out of HIV test kits and have no paediatric (baby) formulation medicines for preventing and treating babies at risk of getting HIV from their mothers.
This will not only lead to about 2500 unnecessary infant HIV deaths per annum, but it also puts our whole population at risk.
If we cannot test people for HIV we cannot treat TB properly (about 20 per cent of new TB infections are HIV-positive), and in these cases the TB drugs do not work unless we also give HIV treatment as well.
We cannot test patients in the hospital who have other diseases and may be HIV-positive.
It is really dangerous for us health workers, because if we inadvertently prick our fingers with blood-stained needles (and this happens every day), then we cannot test the patient and take HIV prevention medicine to avoid getting HIV from the positive patients (because we will not be able to find out the status of the patient!).
Unless the Government starts showing some concern for the people and providing health workers with basic supplies to prevent disease, treat their patients and also prevent us health workers getting life-threatening diseases from our patients, it should not be a surprise to anybody if health workers just ‘stop work’.

Dr Glen Mola