Comments

The West does not understand that Mr Bainimarama is trying to set Fiji on the road that leads to a successful multicultural democracy Thanks to him the country has been turned away from political conflict that was likely to have turned into a civil war. He should be supported by Australia and the West in general.

I think Annabel has raised an important issue. I agree that a HRBA has an important role to play in PNG - noting your picture is taken in front to Koki village. It is fair to say that some program providers do focus effort on the poor and disadvantaged. Save the Children, Family Health, Plan, Care and Red Cross among others come to mind. However, I would suggest the present DFAT allocations suffer from a lack of balance. The annual assistance budget appears to be disproportionally directed at governance and infrastructure at the expense of human capital development. If we accept that access to basic health and education services constitute human rights, then a population of 9 million people starting 4 km from our northern doorstep are increasingly missing out. Access to basic health and education services and economic empowerment are parts of the same picture that I feel Australia must pay more attention to. If our current efforts effectively fail to address the needs of the sixty percent of the population who are under the age of 25 then I fear for the near-term stability of our closest neighbours. The cracks in the edifice of nation building have been widening for the past two decades and the appalling episode that passed for assistance during the era of the Manus arrangement has been a disaster for Australia’s reputation throughout the region. With a new administration steering the ship there is an opportunity to reset the focus with greater attention to supporting human capital development as part of a HRBA. I sincerely hope this is the case from now on.

The national goverment had failed to conduct national population and housing census 2020 to know the exact population of the country. By law census should be conduct every ten years prior to election. The population census will set the base for common roll update to know how many eligible voting population are in PNG at the moment. However this very important process has been miss out where electrol commision rely heavily on 2017 common rolls and base thier estimate population growth using census 2011 outdated data. That is why a lot of citizens has been missed out of voting thier leaders. Therefore we have to correct that by starting at the basic, get the population census done so the goverment can stock take of the population make inform decision base on facts and figures rather than estimates.

The PLS is a brilliant program but it needs to be restricted to other areas apart from aged care for reasons highlighted above plus many more that exist and would surface down the line. Happy for a chat should you require further details and insights on the other potential issues I memtioned.

What great contribution. Thanks for sharing this important information!

Thanks Katao - I think it is important to look at this holistically, i.e. what is the revenue minus the cost. Lets say a farmer normally earns per day 20 kina per unit of coffee minus 5 kina for imported goods (e.g. pesticides, food) and 5 kina for domestic goods (e.g. food etc) - then at the end they will have 10 kina in total (20 minus 5 minus 5 = 10). With a change in the exchange rate of say 20%, their coffee revenue will increase by 20% from 20 to 24 kina, and their imported goods costs will also increase by 20% from 5 to 6 kina, and their domestic goods costs will be unchanged. Meaning that they will earn 13 kina in total (24 minus 6 minus 5 = 13) - so they are 3 kina, or 30 per cent better off in total once everything is taken in to account. This is a totally hypothetical example obviously, and it only affects exports farmers.

Well written piece. There are two more factors based on personality and tribal politics that will ensure Marape remains for the full term. Maybe the research team can do further research. Firstly, I call it the 'support of the big 4', these 4 MPs will cause instability if they move to the opposition anytime between now and 2024. The big 4 from my perspective are; Kramer, Bird, Maru and Juffa. They are outspoken and influential party leaders. Secondly, I call it the 'Hela-Opene political alliance', MPs from Hela and Enga are brothers according to traditional folklore. Engan MPs like Lino who recently became leader of the People's Party will remain loyal to a Marape because he is from Hela.

You are most welcome and take care.j

Thank you for your comment John.

Well stated, i agree on your statement as a citizen of Papua new guinea.

1. How much is paid per fortnight? 2. How much will be declared for food? 3. How much will be declared for room rent? Please answer all my question above.

Malaria data I agree with the author that filling out the current NHIS malaria data sheets, elevating and collating that information into a useful management tool for use at any level is fraught with issues. Elevating aid post records, sometimes months after the event to the NHIS begs the question as to what use it is at that stage. What are the issues that impact upon the quality of the data collected? Firstly, not all aid post workers have malaria data folios issued to them on which to record presentations. Secondly, there is a real question mark over accuracy of the diagnosis for those who do. If the standard issue rapid diagnostic kits are not available, the health worker may have to make a clinical assessment based on the symptoms of the patient. Assessments of clinical diagnosis versus gold the standard of microscopy reveals that workers who have to rely upon clinical diagnosis tend to record a positivity rate up to thirty percent higher than it actually is. Further clinical diagnosis is unable to delineate between a purely blood stage malaria or one with liver dormancy. The usual outcome is to assume the latter and record a mixed species infection which inflates that metric. When RDTs are used there is a tendency by workers pressed for time to shortcut the correct development time and misread the test strip. In reality very few of the 8,000 contributing sites have access to a functional microscope or a WHO accredited level a 1 or 2 microscopist. Less experienced lab techs have a tendency to miss P. vivax altogether or misread the ring stage as P. falciparum, resulting in data in either case being erroneously skewed towards the latter species. Under these circumstances RDTs have been shown to give more accurate results than inexperienced microscopists. There is a need to ensure that workers at every level are constantly supplied with RDTs and that community health workers in particular are provided with in service refresher courses to ensure they continue to read RDTs correctly. Then there is the issue of how best to utilise the data that is recorded. Let’s be clear, depending upon the local geography malaria incidence can vary markedly between communities along a 20 km stretch of coastline. Those close to creeks with still water lagoons may suffer incidence in the order of 100 (100 positive presentations per 1,000 in the population per annum) while communities located in drier locations might see incidence of less than 20 over the same period. Then there is the question of speciation. Does a community have the normal distribution of parasitic infections or is it skewed towards vivax or falciparum and which age group in family is presenting with symptoms? From the perspective of a local level government or district health manager this information is important and should inform the type of response, particularly in relation to community awareness and the vector control measures he or she recommends. The question then is do they get this information and if yes, do they act on it? In my experience visiting aid post workers in different locations throughout the country the answer is more likely to be once data sheets are collected, they never hear about them again. As for how the raw data is used at the level of the NHIS, I have yet to meet a district or LLG level worker who has received feedback courtesy of the NHIS. I agree with the notion of sentinel sites, but unless PNGIMR is properly funded it is doubtful their staff could monitor a sufficiently large sample to adequately to provide the level of national data coverage needed. If there is to be greater value obtained at the local level, I would suggest the focus be placed upon district level collection, analysis and appropriate action in accordance with the results.