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Congratulations my brother. I am always proud having you around. A very wise man who fills with God's Wisdom. Keep pursing more in with no limitations to human inflicted circumstances. You're a strong man, a visionary leader and a change to your family, community and nation for the public consumption of your input in nation building. A great story that can influence your emerging leaders in your locality and the far your message like other's may have reached. Salute Salute Salute!!

Young Man thank you for sharing your experience. Your experience is full of courage and determination that can influence other young kids of today, you've overcome all difficult times and success is just around the corner. You are a man of endurance and I Pray Our Good Lord will fulfill your Dreams 👃

Wow! brother, your background information shared is unique and very challenging to me. I hope others are also inspired too. Facing challenges. Encounter bright future.

May 22, 2023 Very pertinent at this moment when the Prime Minister Marape of PNG is caught in a net of his own making--about to sign off on a 'security treaty' crafted in large part by the US behind closed doors. Based on what is known so far the treaty will undo most, if not, all of the many years of effort put into the SPNFZ treaty and related instruments of peace and security. PNG's gambit is dangerous and irresponsible born of greed and a mindset that appears to be shallow and simplistic.

Indeed. The ~$1b value of those unsatisfactory investments alone makes for eye-watering reading, when considering the budget cycle and likely ammunition needed to make the long-term case for building the ODA/GNI ratio. DFAT is not doing itself any favours by burying this failure rate. Articulating and communicating a clear strategy for quality improvement, in both project prioritisation, co-design and implementation (along with staff capability development) might be a way to avert the naysayers.

Brother, thank you for publicizing your school journey; Very inspiring and I know it will give strength for those who will follow the same journey.

Congratulations on your success son, God has been with you thru out your journey. Stay fast with God and remeber to enlighten your wonderful parents lives. Keep shinning more.

The term Pasefika/Pacifica is also foreign, and I would say, Namarong is wrong. You only saw the one off event up in the highlands and come up with all these differences, however, you have not fully see the real character that blends into what the ocean people are. New Guinea Islands have history and stories connected all the way to Fiji, Samoa and Tonga. The resemblance of most or if not all NGI societies are all found in those smaller Pacific states. All NGI languages are similar to all those Pacific Island languages, their way of cooking, mumu, the names of items are similar and their counting system the same. The Nakanai people of WNBP have 211 items similar to Fijians, and have their counting system exactly same as Fijians. All NGI people eat the same starchy foods, taro, and tapioka and eat taro leaves just like, SI, Vanuatu, Fiji and other smaller atolls. Description of items and the taro species that are planted in WNB, ENB, NIP have their stories traced back to those smaller islands. So, NGI region can prove this perception wrong as we do, act, eat and share the same culture like all other Pasifika.

Hi Stephen, Thank you so much for your valid comments. The rural health services that serve the bulk of the inhabitants lack the capacity to deliver optimum healthcare to the rural population. The primary healthcare settings including, health centres, sub-health centres, community health posts, and aid posts, are struggling to deliver basic health services. There are constant reports of a long-term shortage of essential healthcare workers in all tiers of healthcare settings. Health centres run out of basic medications frequently. Fundings earmarked for the delivery of rural health services simply do not seem to reach the facilities which are responsible for translating health policy through public health programs. There are reports indicating that funding for the health sector has dramatically increased over the past decades. Despite these increases, rural health facilities are struggling to cover the cost of many of their operational activities. Also, the overall health indicators have not improved with the given funding. The shortage of funding has affected other recurrent programs. That suggests that there is a need to seriously reconsider how the funds are disbursed to the province and to facilities. The national health department should revisit the 5th National Health Plan strategy to transfer funds directly to health facilities rather than provinces. From my experience working in health services management with the Lutheran Health Services for 16 years, this approach works fairly well-provided health managers, the officer in charge and facility administrators are adequately trained with health management skills. The basic healthcare infrastructure, including inpatient wards and diagnostic facilities, is poorly maintained. We can't emphasise enough that there is a need for good leadership, management, and accountability at all tiers of the healthcare system including, the local level administration, district health services and provincial health authority. There is a need to strengthen the capacity of the rural health services. The government should concentrate on improving the district hospitals, health centres, community health posts and aid-post. There is also a need to refocus the model of healthcare from an institutional-based to a community/population-based approach by engaging more population health programs, maternal and child health, health promotion and education through the healthy island concept and addressing the social determinants of health (SDOH), such as water, hygiene and sanitation (WASH), housing, access to primary healthcare, and income earning opportunities. More investments are needed in these areas. The majority of the rural populace in PNG access primary healthcare via public health programs. Therefore, if the government can decentralise health services via primary healthcare services, we can witness improved health indicators over the years.

Well done team. If this is the situation at district hospital level what would you conclude for health centres, aid posts and communities, many of whom are remote from a district hospital? A former deputy secretary for health and architect of the national TB protocol, commented to me that PNG is short of about 60,000 HCW of all types to provide an adequate service across all levels. But the National Department of Health and its provincial health authorities have insufficient funds to adequately support the skeleton staff levels or infrastructure they have now. Even if a Fairy Godmother were to kick in the hundreds of millions needed annually to rebuild the capacity of the health system, how could the government financially support this structure going forward? In my view there is a need to rethink what level of facilities government and provincial authorities should concentrate on coupled with an evolution in the way primary healthcare services are funded and delivered. In a country of nine, or anyone’s best guess how many millions of people, a geographically challenging environment with wholly inadequate infrastructure, there is an urgent need to explore local solutions to local problems. At present the communities that desperately need basic services are passive onlookers to whatever the government can provide. For many that means nothing at all. In my experience there is no reason why the people who want the services cannot become part of the solution. To do this they must be empowered economically and some of the output directed towards providing the outreach and "community-based" services they require. Women, who are the primary caregivers have a major part to play in this vision. While this may sound like pie in the sky, the economic component to underpin this has been successfully and sustainably demonstrated in remote settings throughout PNG. If primary healthcare indicators around TB, malaria, maternal and child health, immunisation and referral are to be improved the time has come to give end users agency over the outcomes they desire. This requires a broader vision with a multi-sectoral approach of which health service delivery is an outcome component. In partnership with district and local level government health authorities, make them part of the solution or risk being locked into a system that is unlikely to ever have the resources to solve the nations health challenges alone.

Thanks Jo, Just on the technical point, at some point I will re-run the regressions as ordered logistic regressions (separating effectiveness and efficiency), as part of robustness tests. But in our case I think we are already pretty safe taking averages. The scale is numeric (1 to 6) in AQCs/IMRs, which means the gap between ratings is likely to be perceived by those filling them out as more or less equal. Ordinal scales become more problematic when they are based on questions where the response scale is in words, and the gap less clearly equal, such as: how much do you like..."a little bit" "quite a lot" "a lot". Also worth noting is that we are averaging across two variables (not taking the mean of one variable) and using the resulting variable, which is much closer to being continuous. Thanks again Terence

Hi Maguli For further information on Australia's seasonal work and labour mobility schemes, please go to the Australian government website: https://www.palmscheme.gov.au/