Saved from distance and death

By EREBIRI ZURENUOC
CONDUCTING a medical evacuation is never an easy task, especially in rural Papua New Guinea.
As a photographer, it’s fun to go places. Believe me, everywhere you go in rural PNG, there’s a good story waiting to be told. A story of beautiful scenery or lovely people.
But the challenges the people face are many. You would have to visit these rural villages to see and experience that firsthand.
It was June 23, and Manalso Aviation helicopter pilot Capt Jan Henning was tasked to do a medevac from Katanga village in the Wapi LLG of Menyamya District, Morobe. A person had called the medevac toll free number from Boana station. The caller stated that his sister had been experiencing complications since 1am, after giving birth to her baby. He went on to explain, “bilum bilong bebi i no kam aut na em i lusim bikpela blut. Ol asples i hat long karim em i go long hausik.” The afterbirth has not come out and she was losing a lot of blood. Relatives could not get her to a health centre.
Medevac nurse Joycelyn Huambi got contacts of locals at Katanga off the caller. Her assessment when calling the locals at Katanga was that the mother needed to get out of the village and get help at a hospital. It was a critical case. Capt Henning was determined that we get there quickly. The only helicopter available for medevac was the GBV campaign helicopter, the pink aircraft – P2-HOT.
From Lae to Menyamya takes roughly an hour, just 45 minutes both ways, but for the types of medevacs we do, you can never know if you’re at the right location. Forty-five minutes can turn to two or three hours, because the pilot will land at a different location and wait for villagers to carry the patient to the landing spot.
Well, that was exactly what happened that day.
Capt Henning, Joycelyn who is a professional midwife, and I went on the journey. We left Lae at 11:47am; it was the first time for all three of us to go to Katanga. There was no map showing the exact location of the village. Our operations team were unsure if one of the other pilots had landed at the school nearby previously. Annually, we are tasked by the provincial education division to drop off Grade 8 examination papers at remote schools around Morobe. Luckily, we had an estimated location of Katanga village. We flew right over the village as shown on the helicopter GPS, but Capt Henning wasn’t sure if it was the right location. Imagine searching for the village, circling a location from the sky, looking for a place, big enough to land a big helicopter.
Everyone was waving at the helicopter to land and well, we definitely had to land because on the GPS we were already at the destination. We landed on the playing field of an elementary school at Naniwe, just before Watama village.
The head teacher, who waved for no good reason (well at least he admitted) spoke to Joycelyn as loudly as he could, because the pilot did not shut down the helicopter. He told Joycelyn he could show the way. Joycelyn couldn’t hear much from him, but told him to get on board because he knew where Katanga is. It was his lunch break anyway, so we took him for a helicopter spin.
The teacher pointed us to the direction of the village, until it was visible. Capt Henning couldn’t see a clearing in the village so we landed at the soccer field at Katanga Primary School.
Capt Henning was the first one out. We still had no idea where the mother was, whether she was up in the mountain, at the village or down the mountain by the river. Our only hope was that we landed at the right place. Capt Henning shut down the engine at 12:45pm. The students and teachers, and the people flocked in to see the pink helicopter, or just to watch what we are doing.
Joycelyn, in her quest for more information on the location of the patient, asked some teachers if they had heard any news of a mother with a complication from child-birth. They said the mother was down by the river, and pointed right to the edge of the hill where we landed.
Joycelyn was quite a talker, so she called on the men to go and bring the mother up to the school. A villager said their customs dictated that only older men could carry the mother, not youths. Despite the strong wind, I could still hear Joycelyn’s disagreement.
We stood there, waiting for the elder men to bring the mother to the soccer field, we were unable to follow them as the mountain sides were too steep and to avoid slipping and getting injured, we stayed behind.
More people came to the soccer field to see the helicopter. Students sat under the three, and started pronouncing each of the words on the helicopter. The pink helicopter is the Manolos Aviation Ltd GBV campaign helicopter, an initiative of our CEO’s daughter, Alex Ruh. The theme “Silence. Allows. Violence.” Is a call to action for everyone to report violence, provide solutions for this issue, and put perpetrators where they ought to be. The pink helicopter has names of women who were killed by their husbands or loved ones.
Our rural kids love to read! And that was exactly what they did while we all waited. A good 30 minutes passed, and we could see a teacher, the chairman of Katanga Primary School, and another villager, carrying the mother on a makeshift stretcher up the hill towards us.
They went straight for the helicopter, but Joycelyn said to check the mother’s vitals first, and to prepare her for the flight. They let the mother lie on the makeshift stretcher, under the tree next to the soccer field, while Joycelyn did her assessment.
According to her assessment, the mother was pale and too weak to walk. She was anaemic, and needed blood transfusion right away. According to guardian, the mother gave birth to her baby boy around 1am on Wednesday June 23, at her home. The placenta was retained for more than an hour, until a village woman attempted to remove it. Joycelyn said her inexperience caused the mother to bleed continuously. Joycelyn quickly had an IV fluid out of the medevac Go-Bag, and prepared to inject the mother. I had to give the mother her space, while Joycelyn was looking for the veins on her arm to insert the needle. But if you go rural, there is no such thing as patient privacy.
I was excused for a chat with a group of teachers from Katanga Primary School. They were very vocal over the people’s hardship.
Senior teacher Dianmaia Sakias from Hawabango in Gulf said the Menyamya Health Centre was the only health facility there.
“But it’s too far. Many people have died from snakebites; we lost four people since January 2021. One of the victims of these poisonous snakebites is the biological father of the lady you are airlifting to Lae,” he told me.
“We lost many of our mothers to childbirth complications. A lot of people to curable sicknesses, simply because there are no health services here.
“Many will carry their loved ones and walk, only to return halfway with the deceased,” Sakias said.
Head teacher Ezekiel Kiru was more worried about the school and the children’s education.
“We’ve rebuilt the school in this new location. Most of the buildings are semi-permanent. We have more than 250 students most of whom are yet to complete their school fees,” he said.
“But we understand the situation here. Some parents have deposited only K10, which is all they have. The school fee for junior primary is K50 and senior primary is K100. But still, parents cannot afford that because there is no economic activity here.
“There’s no way to sell coffee or fresh produce because there are no roads and no markets. The Katanga road is a pilot track, and the road was constructed by people using spades or shovels.
“The school received only K10,000 already. Hiring a PMV from Lae to Menyamya is K2,000; we are left with K8,000 to run the school for the first half of the year. We really can’t do much with K8,000,” Kiru said.
Our conversation ended when Joycelyn was ready to load the mother into the helicopter. The relatives gave a hand, and the mother was safely on the stretcher inside the helicopter.
Capt Henning was right at the side of the helicopter, waving at everyone to move back as we prepared for takeoff.
As the blades started spinning, I could see the amazement on the people’s faces. They still could not believe they had seen a helicopter up close. Some of the kids might be wondering where we are taking the mother. The elders and teachers, they just hoped one day they could access much needed health services in their own area.
We arrived at the Manolos Lae heliport at 2.30pm; the mother and baby were rushed to Angau Hospital emergency ward in the Manolos ambulance. The mother, baby and guardian were left at the consultation room, as they waited for a doctor.
Joycelyn’s follow up on Sunday, June 27 confirmed the baby was admitted to the nursery the same day they arrived, and was put on treatment. The mother was stable and while her condition had improved, she was awaiting blood transfusion for her treatment to be complete.
In a separate follow up (for the two other medevac patients) on Saturday, July 3, we found out that both the mother and baby from Katanga were discharged the previous day. We were told that her biological brothers came and took them.
Joycelyn was so relieved to hear that the mother and baby were fine, and that they were taken home by their family after receiving the help they had needed.

• Erebiri Zurenuoc is the public relations officer with Manolos Aviation Ltd.