Comments

Great post, thanks Alex and Lucy. Friends with disability in Australia have also experienced challenges in getting shopping and supplies, particularly when people were hoarding and stockpiling, but some have found the increased availability of telehealth extremely useful. It is particularly alarming reading some of the stories of people experiencing prolonged illness after COVID-19 infections also, with symptoms mirroring long-term invisible and disabling illnesses like ME/CFS or leaving lung, heart and kidney damage. The pandemic may lead to more people living with a disability, only making the need for services and inclusion even greater.

Thank you, Lynne for your comment & I hope the same.

Given that every published case was imported or (probably the overwhelming majority) contracted in quarantine centres, how can you credit hand washing and other community measures with T-L's success (so far!)? Early closure of the borders has been the key.

Thank you for this analysis. Do you have a publicly available report or publication of the survey results you mentioned? If you do, we'd be interested in sharing it on FinDev Gateway where we are maintaining a list different publications and data trackers on the impact of COVID-19 for financial inclusion.

What a nice piece, well structured and articulated.

Excellent piece! Resourceful and thoughtful, and enjoyable read. I think you might want to also check out two more essays on gender in Crawford School's Policy Forum blog on gender.

Thank you Mr. Moses Pala. COVID 19 has affected the supply of fresh produce from all over Highlands and Sogeri into the cities. The government has allocated K41.5m to subsidise shipping costs. This benefits consumers, but not necessarily producers. It is also not sustainable. In terms of assistance, the paper proposes for the DDA or PEC to channel funding through FPDA, in your case. Its the prerogative of the government on the best approach. Thank you

Dear brother, You wrote nice on Tuvalu and I appreciate this.

Peter & Monica, Thank you very much for your comments in regards to my article. As you rightly stated many Papua New Guineans lean to what the Prime Minister has stated and many faithful Christians prayed for God's mercy and protection during the period of COVID-19. Having said this, however, we have two types of people - one is educated and urban based and the other is illiterate and rural based. The rural based population makes up 80%-85% of the country's population and whatever information that is transmitted to them in times of crisis like COVID-19 is often taken for granted. If care can be taken when preparing important public health prevention messages then we would do justice to most of the rural based population who are the main consumers. A more culturally appropriate way to present messages would be to have pictures of real people in proper dressing washing hands with sanitizer or people standing 1-2 meters apart or health workers visiting the locals and telling them to stay home rather than having the unseen viral killer represented in some form of frightening graphic images. This gives completely wrong impressions to the illiterate majority in the villages and in settlements around suburbs. I concur with you that no "quasi-religious messages" must be presented. In Papua New Guinea a variety of Christian movements are popping up everywhere trying to convince people and gain numbers. Besides the mainline Christian churches who are able to understand the crisis situations and comply with the government's instructions and spread the right message, there are other smaller Christian sects who often preach at market places and spread false messages. Their messages are often full of fear and misleading and in times of national health emergencies like COVID-19, it poses great risks for the public. A warning to market and street preachers on spreading false information that undermines scientific truth and understanding during health emergencies would be appropriate for the future.

Hi Angela, Thank you for your comment. I hope we are clear we don't think this is a Pacific problem. There's an empirical pattern, but our key finding points to an underlying issue that does not have anything to do with the people of the Pacific. I like your suggestion of more engagement with Pacific people. To give donors due credit, they already do a lot of this, in ways ranging from government to government partnership, to community driven development projects. Nevertheless, more conversations would add much more, particularly conversations that empower people at the grassroots to have their say, and particularly conversations that carefully negotiate power dynamics within countries and communities. Thank you also for letting me know about the social media discussion. Other than one comment on twitter, I was unaware of it. People are very welcome to tag me on twitter @terencewoodnz. I'm very happy to discuss more with people via email or Zoom or the like too. Thanks again for taking the time to engage. Terence

FROM Peter Dwyer & Monica Minnegal Gabriel Thank you for your article. We agree that it is important to present information to people in culturally appropriate ways. It is not easy, however, to know either what information is culturally appropriate or what ways of presenting information are culturally appropriate. In an earlier COVID-19 Devpolicy Blog, Aletia Dundas wrote of Christian leaders who are providing ‘messages that support government directives and medical advice, and they are offering biblical references to back up their words’ [May 12, 2020]. By contrast you have directed attention to messages that may cause ‘fear and panic’ and have ‘significant implications in relation to core social and cultural values’. You note that some of these messages come from ‘religious fanatics and so-called street preachers’. Getting the balance right is both important and difficult. We have been monitoring some social media sites and, in general, consider that many people are able to uphold close adherence to their own cultural values while adopting an objective and critical stance with respect to available information. The key site we watch is not overwhelmed by interpretations based in conspiracy, fake news or selected Biblical verses. Many people probably lean to the understanding expressed by Prime Minister James Marape at the time the State of Emergency was lifted. He wrote that he ‘saw the hand of God’ in the survival of the eight known cases of COVID-19 and he thanked ‘all church faithfuls, who fasted and prayed for PNG not to be ravaged by the devastation coronavirus can cause as it is causing in many established countries globally’. We suspect more Papua New Guineans will be thanking God for their survival than arguing that the pandemic was punishment for their sins. At this time, we think that it may be government messages rather than quasi-religious messages that must be presented with care. In the past few days, a ninth positive case of coronavirus has been detected in PNG. Many early responses on social media are suspicious. Is this fake news? Is this a ploy to raise funds? The ‘culture’ at stake here is not of the past; it is very much of the present and it is focused more on the secular than the sacred.

Thank you for compiling such as this highlights