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...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...Port Moresby General Hospital is one of the few safe places for women to give birth, but 30% of our workforce has Covid-19 and we may have to shut our doors
At Port Moresby General Hospital, about 20% of women presenting in labour have symptoms of Covid-19. Of these, about one-third (four to five women a day) test positive.
We get the test results back about two to three hours after we take the swabs, so often by the time the woman is delivering her baby it is too late to transfer her to the Covid isolation ward for the birth and staff have attended to her and been exposed to the virus, without being able to don the appropriate level of PPE and practice other precautionary measures to protect themselves.
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...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...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...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...Conservationist on a remote Papua New Guinean island finds message from American girl thrown overboard more than 2,500km away
This bottle was different. Glass, with its lid sealed tight, it contained a handful of rice grains and a few seashells. And a note.
In November, on the remote Conflict Islands of Papua New Guinea, conservation ranger Steven Amos was cleaning the beachfront on Panasesa island when he stumbled across something that was not thoughtlessly thrown away, but consciously sent as a message to an unknown recipient, somewhere in the world.
Continue reading...A handful of countries – most of them islands, most of them remote – remain coronavirus-free, but life has not remained wholly unchanged
For all of its virulence, for all the breathtaking speed with which it spread seemingly everywhere around the globe, there are places still where Covid-19 has not reached, and might never.
Places without face masks or elbow-bumps, without QR codes or capacity limits, without lockdowns or social distancing. There are a handful of countries across the globe – many of them islands, most of them remote – that have managed to escape the pandemic. But while the virus hasn’t hit, the global shockwaves it has sent rippling around the world certainly have.
Continue reading...Five alleged sorcery-related deaths – including the hanging of a 13-year-old boy - in a single week in one Papua New Guinea province, has revived a nationwide angst over the persistent crime of alleged witchcraft killings.
In the highland villages and the lowland towns of Papua New Guinea, it is the crime that everybody knows about, that many see, but that few can, or do, anything to stop.
Those who survive it are left disfigured: limbs shattered and missing, faces scarred and swollen, souls forever damaged.
Continue reading...Optimism abounds as leaders from Fiji to Papua New Guinea welcome the new US president-elect
Joe Biden’s presidential ascension had not even been settled when Fiji’s forthright prime minister was already urging greater US action on climate change from the incoming American leader.
“Congratulations Joe Biden,” Frank Bainimarama tweeted on Saturday afternoon. “Together, we have a planet to save from a climate emergency and a global economy to build back better from Covid-19.”
Continue reading...New provincial commander says he is concerned by allegations of rape and sexual assault by officers in Alotau Town
Two policemen have been charged with rape allegedly committed inside a police station in Alotau Town, in Papua New Guinea’s south-east, but the city’s most senior officer said he fears others sexual assaults may have been committed by police, with victims too afraid to report attacks.
“I can honestly say that this practice may have been going on for a while,” Milne Bay provincial police commander Peter Barkie told the Guardian. “I’ve heard about it but since taking office I can only confirm two [alleged] cases, who were charged during my time.”
Continue reading...The Chinese-backed gold, silver and copper mine at Frieda river risks catastrophic environmental destruction, special rapporteurs argue
The plan for the largest mine in Papua New Guinea’s history carries a risk of catastrophic loss of life and environmental destruction and “appears to disregard the human rights of those affected”, according to United Nations officials.
In an extraordinary intervention, 10 UN special rapporteurs have written with “serious concerns” to the governments of Papua New Guinea, Australia, China, and Canada, as well as the Chinese state-owned developers of the gold, copper and silver mine proposed for the remote Frieda river in the country’s north.
Continue reading...Manus Island’s Nahau Rooney, at one time the only woman in PNG’s parliament, dedicated her life to advancing women in her country
Hardworking, audacious, occasionally controversial, but always vivacious: one of Papua New Guinea’s political pioneers, Nahau Rooney, has been remembered as a trailblazer for PNG women in power following her death on 15 September, aged 75.
In 1977, Rooney was one of just three women elected to PNG’s first post-independence parliament – out of 109 members – where she served as the regional member for the province of Manus.
Continue reading...Of island’s nearly 1,900 cases, 70% were diagnosed in August and September, with one in 10 tests positive
A 10-year-old boy has become Covid-19’s latest fatality on Guam, as the island struggles to rein in an outbreak that threatens to overwhelm its public health system.
The boy, who had underlying health conditions, died on Sunday night at the US Naval Hospital, 10 days after contracting the virus. He is the 26th person to die from Covid on Guam.
Continue reading...Port Moresby nature park may not survive the impact of pandemic shutdowns
From the heat and dust of the city’s noisy, crowded streets, the Port Moresby Nature Park is an oasis, for the city’s residents as well as the animals it keeps.
Home to more than 500 creatures and spread over 30 verdant acres, the park has spent years rescuing injured, orphaned or trafficked animals from across the country, and protected and nurtured native species, including the endangered pig-nosed turtle, and the magnificent riflebird.
Continue reading...Papua New Guinean student Lesley Wengembo has painted campus assistant Mal Nagobi for Australia’s famous Archibald prize
Alongside Malachi Nagobi, progress across the august grounds of the National Art School in Sydney is constantly – happily – impeded.
“Mal!” comes a voice, “hello Mal,” another. Every handful of steps, another person wants to stop to chat.
Continue reading...