Via The New York Times: Papua New Guinea Is Rich in Resources but Poor in Health. Excerpt:
PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea — Polio was vanquished by the Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea 18 years ago. Now, as world leaders gather there for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting this week, polio has returned — on top of raging drug-resistant epidemics of tuberculosis, malaria and H.I.V., and deadly flash points of preventable diseases like whooping cough and measles.
All over the country, there are symptoms of a profound public health emergency; young and old are getting sick and dying unnecessarily, while facilities lack basic medicines and equipment.
Doctors and experts say the unfolding crisis is the realization of their worst fears after years of deterioration and neglect.
“We were expecting something like this,” Dr. Anup Gurung, a public health specialist with the World Health Organization, said of the polio outbreak at a news conference in the capital, Port Moresby, in September.
He pointed to the erosion of vaccination rates, which are down to 30 percent in some parts of the country. “It’s like someone lit a paper castle where everything is on fire,” he said.
Officials in Papua New Guinea hope that hosting the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC, meeting in Port Moresby will elevate the country’s international profile, but the health crisis has become an embarrassment for a nation with an abundance of gold, copper, silver, oil and gas.
Public frustration with the summit spending has already led to two national strikes. The collapse of health services has been a focus of the protests.
The return of polio is a clear indicator of the failures, with Papua New Guinea accounting for 21 of 109 cases found globally this year.
The Papua New Guinea outbreak is vaccine-derived, which means that weakened live virus excreted by vaccinated children has mutated and escaped into the rapidly increasing unprotected population. Dr. Gurung blamed “the steady breakdown of the health system” for the country’s polio emergency.
Local and international experts point to three interlinked causes of the country’s health crisis: the collapse of the medical supply chain; changing relations with the country’s biggest aid donor, Australia; and rampant corruption.
Getting medicines, equipment and other supplies around Papua New Guinea has always been challenging. The country has few roads, formidable geography and a widely dispersed population, with about 80 percent living in rural and remote locations.
That improved with assistance from Australia, but the Australian government withdrew from the arrangement in protest in 2013 after Papua New Guinea awarded the national medicine supply contract to a local company that Julie Bishop, then the Australian foreign minister, said had no accreditation and “a history of supplying substandard drugs.”
The company, Borneo Pacific, won the contract — worth 32 million Australian dollars, or $23 million — despite its bid being millions of dollars higher than those of reputable international organizations. At the time, the Medical Society of Papua New Guinea said the deal would “lead to the deaths of many Papua New Guineans.”
Reports from health facilities across the country indicate those fears have been borne out. (Borneo Pacific did not respond to requests for comment.)
