Unrest led to medicine shortage, says health worker

By CRETILDA ALOKAKA
THE civil unrest that occurred recently in Port Moresby has left villages along the Rigo Coast and Hula, in Central, with no basic medicine, a health worker says.
Disease control officer for Hula Health Centre, Waula Araga, said that due to the violence, transportation of the medicines to Hula had been stopped.
“For safety purposes, we couldn’t travel into the city to get Panadol, antibiotics and amoxicillin supplies,” he said.
Araga said that last week, they had to refer all their patients to the Kwikila Health Centre.
“When there is a shortage of medicines, we refer most of our patients to the Kwikila Health Centre,” he said.
“We also do awareness on how the villagers can keep themselves safe from flu or bruises and cuts in the event where there is no medicine to treat them.
Araga said that this was not the first time the health centre had experienced a shortage of basic medicines.
“We have experienced this before, however, this is neither the government’s nor our fault,” he said.
“People get sick all the time thus, a shortage was likely to happen.
“Also, there are more patients and there is insufficient supply.”
Araga said they usually restocked medicine supplies every second month but due to the high population, the clinic had been experiencing a shortage of medicines and the civil unrest stopped them from getting new supplies.
“We treat more than 25,000 patients in a month, the medicine shortage was unavoidable,” he said.
Araga added that they had restocked their medicines three days ago to avoid another encounter.