Exhausted doctors warn sceptical patients that Covid is real as Port Moresby general reaches capacity
The emergency department of the largest hospital in the capital of Papua New Guinea is hot, stuffy and full. People sit lined up outside the front counter, waiting to be seen.
It has been divided into two sections: the front continues to operate as a traditional emergency room, while the back is now a Covid-19 isolation ward, treating the most serious cases of the virus.
Continue reading...Two tankers flying the flag of the remote Pacific archipelago are alleged to have been involved in subterfuge shipping of Iranian oil
Two tankers flying the flag of the Cook Islands have been scrubbed from the islands’ shipping registry after allegations the vessels were sanctions-busting, transporting Iranian crude oil while concealing their movements.
US sanctions on Iran’s oil and gas sector have, somewhat improbably, caught up the tiny Cooks archipelago on the other side of the world.
Continue reading...Cases of coronavirus reached record highs on the weekend, as more than 120 hospital staff in Port Moresby hospital test positive
Papua New Guinea has reported a record number of Covid-19 cases over the weekend as doctors warn that the hospital system is in the brink of being overwhelmed and more people could die outside emergency rooms.
The news came as a photograph of a woman who died outside the Port Moresby General Hospital went viral on social media causing outrage with fears the woman’s death was due to hospital being overwhelmed due to Covid-19.
Continue reading...Papua New Guinea has seen coronavirus cases skyrocket, with fears it could push the health system to breaking point
When Papua New Guinea recorded its first Covid case in March 2020, the country held its breath.
There were acute fears about its on the country’s already overwhelmed and under-resourced health system, which has roughly 500 doctors to serve a population of around nine million, and was already struggling to deal with outbreaks of measles, drug-resistant tuberculosis and polio.
Continue reading...Month-long restrictions to come into force as officials warn virus could rip through PNG’s fragile health system ‘like a tornado’
Papua New Guinea will go into a month-long nationwide isolation in an effort to arrest a spiralling Covid-19 outbreak that threatens to rip through the country’s fragile health system “like a tornado”, health officials say, shutting hospitals and leaving wards without sufficient staff.
Hospitals across the country have already been forced to shut wards and departments, overwhelmed by a combination of staff becoming infected with the coronavirus, surging patient demand, and swingeing budget cuts.
Continue reading...Female children are seen as an economic burden, and tough times are setting back progress by a generation, gender equality charity says
Thousands of adolescent girls across south-east Asia and the Pacific are being forced to leave school and get married instead as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, a charity has warned, saying “a generation of girls could be lost”.
A new report by Plan International Australia highlighted the importance of secondary education for girls, and detailed the increased risk and long-term impacts of child, early and forced marriage in the region.
Continue reading...A new documentary shows that while the health impacts of the pandemic have - so far - been largely avoided, the effects of isolation on families, communities, and livelihoods has been profound
Faith, family, and a little bit of farming.
The Pacific’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic has been one of self-reliance and resistance: to turn to its communities and churches, its lands and seas.
Continue reading...Biak island residents say SpaceX launchpad would devastate island’s ecology and displace people from their homes
Papuans whose island has been offered up as a potential launch site for Elon Musk’s SpaceX project have told the billionaire Tesla chief his company is not welcome on their land, and its presence would devastate their island’s ecosystem and drive people from their homes.
Musk was offered use of part of the small island of Biak in Papua by Indonesian president Joko Widodo in December.
Continue reading...PNG’s Grand Chief led the country to independence in 1975 and served four terms as prime minister
The man who led Papua New Guinea to independence, the country’s Grand Chief and longest-serving prime minister, Sir Michael Somare, has died in Port Moresby, aged 84.
Known throughout the country as “Papa blo Kantri” – Father of the Nation – Somare served as prime minister for a total of 17 years, over four terms, and was revered as a pivotal figure in the country’s peaceful transformation from colony to independent nation. He is depicted on PNG’s 50 Kina banknote.
Continue reading...The majority of the Pacific nation’s population won’t be immunised for another two years, government planning documents show
Despite a tourism-dependent economy devastated by coronavirus shutdowns, Vanuatu’s Covid-19 vaccination programme will not inoculate most of its population until the end of 2023.
According to the ministry of health’s national deployment and vaccination plan, the first shots will be administered in April this year, but only the most vulnerable 20% of the population will get a jab in the first phase.
Continue reading...Micronesia had no choice to but to abandon the Pacific Islands Forum after being ‘thoroughly and publicly disregarded’, the President of Palau writes
What becomes of an organisation when it disregards one-third of its membership? What happens when “we” stops being inclusive?
As the eldest of four, I have always felt responsible for the safety, security, and well-being of my siblings. In my family, “I” has always been synonymous with “we”, the collective, being one inclusive family and ensuring no one is left out. This is what I understand to be the Palauan way; this is what I understand to be the Pacific Way.
Continue reading...A sustainable forestry project established to develop some of PNG’s most marginalised communities has become mired in an international corruption scandal
“There is always the stench of corruption around a deal that is too bad to be true or too good to be true,” a full-page advertisement in Papua New Guinea’s Post Courier baldly declared in May 2018.
“Usually, because it’s not true.”
Continue reading...Micronesian sub-grouping walks out over selection of new secretary-general
The Pacific Islands Forum – the Pacific’s most influential regional body – is in disarray after nearly one-third of its member countries quit en masse.
The countries of the Micronesian sub-grouping – Palau, the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, and Nauru – have all abandoned the forum over the selection of the new secretary-general for the forum, following the election of Polynesia’s candidate in defiance of a long-standing convention that dictated it was the Micronesia’s turn to provide the forum’s leader.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia and Nauru question whether to remain members amid bullying claims
Leaders of Micronesian countries are contemplating abandoning the Pacific Islands Forum altogether, after a fractious vote for a new secretary general sidelined the north Pacific countries, who say they are bullied by larger nations, and left with “crumbs”.
The Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) is the Pacific region’s most important political body and a powerful voice for the Pacific on the global stage, but the election of former Cook Islands prime minister Henry Puna as secretary general has exposed a deep fracture between north and south Pacific nations.
Continue reading...Presence of Pal Ahluwalia deemed ‘prejudicial to peace’: a report by the vice-chancellor alleged widespread financial mismanagement at University of the South Pacific
Fiji police have carried out a midnight raid at the home of the vice-chancellor of the prestigious University of the South Pacific and summarily deported him on orders of the prime minister, in a move described by students as a “coup” and likened by staff to “gestapo tactics”.
Up to 15 immigration, police and military officials forced their way into Pal Ahluwalia’s home in Suva on Wednesday night, revoked his work permit and escorted the vice-chancellor and his wife, Sandra Price, to Nadi international airport. He was then forced on to a flight under military guard to Australia on Thursday.
Continue reading...Thierry Santa’s multi-party government collapses a few months after narrow referendum vote to remain within French republic
Even as Tropical Cyclone Lucas bears down on New Caledonia, the French Pacific dependency also faces a political storm, with the collapse of the multi-party government led by President Thierry Santa.
Five members of the government, representing the pro-independence groups UC-FLNKS and the Union nationale pour l’indépendance (UNI) resigned on 2 February. Both groups are members of the Front de libération nationale kanak et socialiste (FLNKS), which campaigns for independence from France.
Continue reading...Pacific diplomacy hinges on in-person discussion but web-only meetings have fed a growing dispute over the forum’s leadership and purpose
In the Pacific, it is all about the talanoa: the conversation and the consensus.
For the 50 years of the Pacific Islands Forum (beginning life as the South Pacific Forum), meetings have always happened in person, and it is the power of the leaders being together that has given the forum its rare ability to find common ground.
Continue reading...The New Zealand foreign minister’s moko has become international news, but beyond an identifier, our tatau are a link to ancestors, a vessel for our cultures’ stories, and a tribute to those who have gone before
Shortly before my interview with six Europeans at a roundtable in Germany, I gently covered my hand tattoo with a skin-toned foundation.
I knew that without the proper context, they would stereotype me in the western sense and presume me either a criminal or at least uneducated or unprofessional. A perception of tattooing common on that side of the world.
Continue reading...Crew on two vessels face further investigation in Pacific nation, a month after similar incident in Palau
Two Chinese fishing vessels have been detained by Vanuatu authorities amid allegations they were fishing illegally in the Pacific nation’s territorial waters.
This is the first time that Chinese vessels have been accused of illegal fishing activities in Vanuatu’s territory, but their confinement comes just a month after Palau detained a Chinese-flagged vessel reportedly illegally harvesting sea cucumber, or beche-de-mer, in the western Pacific state’s territorial waters.
Continue reading...A global treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons becomes international law today. But the fight to rid the world of these dismal weapons continues.
In 1995, thousands of people marched peacefully hand-in-hand through the Tahitian capital of Pape’ete. The palm-lined streets were awash with songs of protest.
On a nearby shorefront, Cook Islanders had just arrived by traditional voyaging canoe: a vaka. They were there to deliver a message of solidarity with their island neighbours, en route to the nuclear test site of Moruroa.
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