COVID-19 tornado hitting Papua New Guinea s fragile hospitals, say health workers Toggle share menu
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COVID-19 tornado hitting Papua New Guinea s fragile hospitals, say health workers
FILE PHOTO: A woman washes clothes on a wooden path between stilt houses at Hanuabada Village, located in Port Moresby Harbour, Papua New Guinea, November 19, 2018. REUTERS/David Gray/File Photo
17 Mar 2021 04:37PM Share this content
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SYDNEY: Rapidly increasing COVID-19 infections in hospitals in the Pacific island nation of Papua New Guinea were hitting its fragile health system like a tornado , with services shutting as staff fall ill, health workers said on Wednesday (Mar 17).
By Kirsty Needham
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Rapidly increasing COVID-19 infections in hospitals in the Pacific island nation of Papua New Guinea were hitting its fragile health system like a tornado , with services shutting as staff fall ill, health workers said on Wednesday.
Australia said it would send 8,000 vaccines to its northern neighbour Papua New Guinea, responding to a request for urgent assistance for the country s small health workforce of 5,000 nurses and doctors.
David Ayres, country director with Marie Stopes PNG, which has nurses in 13 hospitals, told Reuters health workers throughout the country were falling ill. He had received multiple reports from hospitals on Wednesday that between 10 and 25 staff had fallen ill and were off work.
All passenger flights from Papua New Guinea into Cairns have been suspended.
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Australia will also send one million surgical masks, 200,000 respirator masks, 100,000 gowns, 100,000 goggles, 100,000 pairs of gloves, 100,000 bottles of sanitiser, 20,000 face shields and 200 non-invasive ventilators to the country. Defence is also sending 2000 tents to help triage patients at Port Moresby Hospital.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is dispatching a medical team to carry out âcritical needs analysisâ and help open more testing centres, with 19 of the 22 provinces in PNG recording some kind of COVID-19 outbreak.
Fears about the extent of the outbreak escalated over the weekend, with Port Moresby General Hospital recording about 20 per cent of the women presenting in labour having symptoms of COVID-19.
Aid from Australia to support the fight against COVID-19 in Papua New Guinea has begun arriving in the nation s capital.
Tents to be used for triaging patients at the Port Moresby General Hospital and air conditioning units are among supplies being delivered under the government s plan to assist the struggling country.
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Supplies from Australia have begun arriving in PNG capital to assist with the nation s fight against COVID-19.(9News)
Prime Minister Scott Morrison also announced 8000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine and one million surgical masks would also be provided to PNG.
The help comes amid growing concerns of a second virus wave in PNG which could reach Australia through international arrivals.
Over the past 50 years, in the 92-93% of women who are booked for pregnancy care in our cityâs antenatal clinics, we have managed to achieve the lowest level of perinatal (babies) death of any public maternity in the low-to-middle-income world (18-19/1000) while having possibly the lowest caesarean section rate of any large public maternity in the world (5-6%).
In the rest of PNG only about 50% of the countryâs (mainly rural) pregnant women are able to access pregnancy and birthing care. This results in PNG having some of the highest national maternal and perinatal death statistics in the world. Port Moresby General Hospital has a track record to be proud of, but it is all possibly about to end â because the Covid-19 epidemic has finally reached PNG.