US team arrives to support province fight Covid-19

A SEVEN-member emergency medical team (EMT) from the United States (US) arrived in Port Moresby yesterday and will be deployed to Western Highlands tomorrow.
Covid-19 National Control Centre (NCC) Controller David Manning said the surge in Western Highlands had a great impact on the health workforce and resources there and the EMT Team Rubicon Disaster Response (TRDR) would be deployed their to support the provincial health authority in its Covid-19 fight over the next six weeks.
Team Rubicon Emergency Response is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) comprising nurses, doctors and logisticians who are volunteers and are funded by the American people and businesses.
“The country is going through some significant challenges at this point in time in terms of our response to the Covid-19,” Manning said.
“As part of the response and in line with the current surge, we have to re-strategise in the last couple of months to have a review of what we have done, and of course, restructure ourselves to provide an appropriate response to the current surge that we are facing in NCD and right across the country.
“Part of that also meant that we have to ask for expert assistance from overseas.”
The controller said through the World Health Organisation, a request was put out on March 19, and countries responded, including the US, with TRDR, which followed the arrival of the Australian medical assistance teams (Ausmat) two weeks ago.
He said the second batch of the Austmat team would arrive today and EMT from other countries such as Germany, would arrive in the coming weeks and deployed to provinces.