Comments

Thanks for a helpful post. It is encouraging to hear all the great things happening through the church partnership program in PNG. Many of the challenges (and opportunities) associated with such partnerships (including Western secularism) are discussed in detail in a book by Bryant Myers, who worked for World Vision for many years. I explain why I like it so much in a blog post. https://revelation4-11.blogspot.com/2021/11/how-might-christians-respond-to-poverty.html BTW. I also recommend Duncan Green's book, From Poverty to Power, having given it to some Christians in South Asia to help them in their desire to be agents of positive social change.

Thank you for the link.

Thanks Ian, really appreciate you taking the time to read and share those stats. I hadn’t seen the latest Sustainable Development Report but those figures paint a pretty stark picture. It’s hard to argue we’re on the right trajectory when no country in the Pacific is on track for meeting SDG 3. Also, I have to give credit where it’s due. The phrase “under the bonnet” in the article was one I borrowed from you in your description of the Health Sector Support Program in Solomons a few years ago. I always thought it perfectly captured the nature of HSS focused programs. Thanks again.

It was all there and we need to work at it and deliver results for PNG.

Great to see. We need to get it rolled across the whole Districts and Province to give us national database thar could be used for planning and other uses including Civil Registry and Ward and Common Rolls.

That is exactly the system that is available and can be done cheaply yet we looking at doing the end of the process meaning work on the Common Roll rather than the Village Book that would give us the Common Roll.

A ‘ruckus’ is rather a mild way of putting it! The whole thing is appalling. But as you imply, the buck stops with whomever hired them. I would hope Ms Malimali finishes up with at least double the initial sum offered, all things considered. Even though she’s probably tempted to tell them to shove it at this stage! The sad thing is this sort of nonsense only serves to discourage high calibre individuals from public service. And goodness knows, Fiji needs them.

I love what you are doing for Vanuatu and Pacific as a whole. I'm from Papua New Guinea and I have the vision to fight climate change by mobilizing my people and registered an Association with relevant authorities and I'm making awareness and therefore need such people like you to help me to fight the climate change fight in our small way as our contributions. Thank-you, John

Thanks Wilson. I've always argued for use of ward records. In my ward back home, the most updated data about the ward and its estimated 1000 population is kept by our Ward Recorder. He operates mostly on a voluntary basis, but his data is the most accurate of any government record about the ward. There are departments already set up with the mandate to coordinate data collation as you point out, which are cheaper and relatively reliable. I am not sure if the political leaders ask these departments before coming up with millions of Kina worth of alternative ideas.

Hi Wilson. There was some work done by DPLGA and CARE PNG in 2016 to update the Ward level planning and data collection approaches. If you go to pngcdwstandard.com and navigate to the menu "other resources - for working with wards, communities, CBOs, SMEs & families" you will find it all available for download. https://pngcdwstandard.com/resources-for-use-by-cdws-working-with-wards-communities-groups-and-smes/

Thank you, Wilson for the article. It is a very practical solution. Worked in the past for patrol officers and is effective bridging information gaps at different tiers of government.

A very interesting and informative blog. Recent international reports add to those concerns, shedding light on gaps and weaknesses in underlying health systems. For example, the latest Sustainable Development Report 2025, <a href="https://dashboards.sdgindex.org/chapters" rel="nofollow ugc"> available here</a>, finds on page 23 that none of the 21 countries in East and South Asia are “on track” to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 3) which targets “good health and wellbeing”. The report also finds that 14 countries in that region face “major challenges” and 5 face “significant” challenges in achieving SDG 3 by 2030. The report also finds (page 26) that none of the 12 Pacific Island countries are “on track” to achieve SDG 3; all 12 have “major challenges” in achieving SDG 3; that 7 countries are “stagnating” and the remaining 5 are only “moderately increasing” progress to achieving SDG 3. Furthermore, the World Bank and World Health Organization separately report that “The world is off track to make significant progress towards universal health coverage (UHC) by 2030 as improvements to health services coverage have stagnated since 2015, and the proportion of the population that faced catastrophic levels of out-of-pocket (OOP) health spending has increased….Moreover, the majority of countries (108/194) experienced worsening or no significant change in service coverage since the launch of the SDGs in 2015” (Source: Tracking universal health coverage: 2023 global monitoring report, page xi and xii).