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Governments need to work together urgently to open the borders of Australia/NZ/Fiji and surrounding Pacific Island nations. There has been a huge overreaction to Coronavirus. Just how long can governments keep us separated from our families? Finally, as Fiji Airways has sacked most of its cabin crew-I am interested to see how they are going to put planes back in the sky. Terminated cabin crew-even if invited back to their flying roles-will mostly have run out of currency in Emergency Procedures. Standard service and emergency procedure training for new recruits -once accepted .-takes a minimum of six weeks.! And it is very expensive to train cabin crew. Our “leaders” (George Orwell’s 1984 comes to mind yet again) need to be in the same ballpark. Let us free!! By all means take temperatures and ensure travellers can be contacted! Enough is enough.

Too much focus on data collection can sometimes be to the detriment of actual service delivery in fragile health systems. In Nigeria, donors come with their own data tools and incentivize health workers to fill them to the detriment of the National tools. The cost of printing and dispatching mountains of paper tools to the thousands of health facilities is not often discussed. Because of cost, several health facilities have no tools with which to report to the national Health Management Information system. Apart from the greed for more data, let us also mention the incompetence/inexperience of those who respond to this hunger by designing, heavy, complicated instruments. An instrument is not just a list of questions...it’s meant to be a tool and can only be as good as the operator's capacity to understand and use it. As you rightly pointed out, our health workers are under-skilled, under-equipped and overworked. The data from the NHMIS reflects this..

Wow... Thanks for writing commerating one of the best, and honest public servants of our time. I like that you gave credit to his patriotism for the country through his work. Thank you.

An interesting piece by Mr. Bizhan. The very update regarding Afghanistan is that the state has stopped providing bread for vulnerable citizens, which was being done during the Ramadan month. However, the state officials (talking on Radio Arman) said that another package of direct aid will be provided soon; given that the "Soon" word in Afghanistan's state terminology sounds a joke since it literally means "never" or at best will take a long time.

Hi Stephen. Thanks for this. A press release is indeed a positive step forward in terms of openness and transparency compared to earlier actions. While funding for the Global Fund and GAVI is pleasing, it does highlight the lack of a clear aid narrative. Recently, the government expressed clear dislike for the “unaccountable internationalist bureaucracy” that GF and GAVI represent. Now with the revised COVID focused aid tilt, funding for them is increased. I have also heard that there is a new multilateral aid assessment being conducted (though not sure if it is using the same methodology as the ones conducted five or six years ago). Lots of strands - I do hope they are woven into a beautiful clear tapestry at some point...

Buai Spitting May spread COVID 19 Virus Buai spitting is very questionable and before we add into our COVID 19 Messages, we must confirm as one of the medium of transmission of COVID 19. The reason why I am saying is that the poster shown in this blog written "Buai Spitting may spread the virus". Are we really sure of it or just to raise fear into our people who chew and live with buai many thousand years. We need medical or scientific evidence to support the Phrase "BUAI SPITTING MAY SPREAD VIRUS (COVID19). I have seen the poster and i asked myself why do we have to come up with such messaging and disseminate this information to our people only to create fear and once fear is instilled into them, the community members who grow Buai lost their income and surely it will affect their livelihoods. Thanks

Hi Paul Like you I was very sorry to hear of his death. As a cruising yacht, I visit his island every year I visit PNG. Never saw him face to face, but we spoke on the phone, to see if my volunteer project could help his people.

Dear Ian, you are making a very good and important point! There are certainly areas in which we lack sufficient data, such as the cost of service delivery you mention, but also the effective coverage of interventions and determinants of health outcomes, to name just a few. The two key questions to ask ourselves would then be: i) what are ways of collecting such data without overburdening the system, particularly service delivery, and without generating unnecessary parallel systems, and ii) how can we ensure the data is useful and used for decision making for the benefit of the people in PNG (or any other country). Part of the answer to question ii) I see in the development of strong local capacity, including leadership capacity, which is a long-term undertaking, rather than a quick fix.

O this era East Timor not well by hand again but East Timor could awake and running by all what will give benefit on the future like knowledge, capacity building, human resource, economic, businesses management, agriculture and all sector I didn't mention yet – we need to put our priority to build not to expanding Money only for boulseat.

Thanks for sharing your "complaint" in a very honest and well-mannered way, but I believe that was just the tip of the iceberg. I wish my fellow Timorese will have their chance to read this as well.

It's worth mentioning, however, that one standout in the Timorese bureaucracy is the Technical Secretariat for Electoral Administration (STAE), which has done a first rate job over the years in delivering elections the validity of which has never been seriously questioned, even against the background of the sometimes fractious politics in the country. Voters wishing to obtain their photographic voter ID cards are normally able to get them on the spot when they go to a registration office. Timor-Leste stands higher on the Perceptions of Electoral Integrity Index than the USA, and every other country in South East Asia. https://www.electoralintegrityproject.com/s/Electoral-Integrity-Worldwide.pdf

I'm originally from Australia,I came to East Timor in December 1999 and been living in East Timor ever since. My wife is Timorese and I have 5 wonderful children, the saddest fact I would like to point out is that as a father I can see that this country is struggling to find it's way. I'm concerned that there is going to be no future for my children to live their lives here in East Timor, the government's hear are just wasting the money from the oil fund on bullshit projects that have no economical benifits to the community's of East Timor... Corruption and miss management of this country will only end if the Timorese people can stand up and speak up about what is really happening... All Timorese deserve a safe and secure future.🇹🇱💖🇦🇺