I heard of Sky News a day or so ago the host suggest that Australia should given PNG all the vaccinations we have in reserve – around three million. People need to get rule – and that includes media commentators and observers!
Australia initially gave PNG 8,000 doses of the vaccine. I am reliably informed that barely half have been given or distributed to the right areas.
The vaccine is going to continue to cause enormous problems for the good people of our closest neighbour – and be an ever present threat to the most northern parts of Australia in particular.
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And tragically over crowded hospitals nd over worked doctors and nurses are going to mean that other serious illnesses are simply not going to be attended to. I hear that the already high infant mortality rate will worsen even more.
Given this reality, Australia simply needs to urgently review its whole aid program and overall policy approach to Papua New Guinea, as I have suggested on numerous occasions.
Firstly the existing $600 million a year "development assistance" budget must stop, and be totally restructured.
It is wasteful in the extreme to continue to fund dozens, if not hundreds, of development assistance projects while the pandemic continues to spread nationwide.
If Australia decides, as it might well do in the coming weeks, to half all flights to and from Papua New Guinea then development assistance programs managed by well paid private contractors will grind to a halt.
Australia cannot solve the totality of the problems facing the PNG health sector – hospitals, rural health centres, clinics and vaccine rollouts and more. But we can divert some of the aid budget to urgently re-building and upgrading major hospitals where the most serious Covid cases are taken.
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And we can use some of the aid budget to boost the number of skilled medical teams Australia has already generously contributed.
But we cannot solve the problems in the failed health system alone. We need to line up with World Health Organisation in particular top do more.
And we can better fund and support worthy Australian groups, such as YWAM Medical Ships out of Townsville, to play a greater role in meeting basic rural health needs especially in the Western, Gulf, Central, NCD and Milne Bay Provinces that are closest to Australia.
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