When I grow up – I want to be a Pharmacist
When I grow up – I want to be a Nurse
There is no doubt that PNG needs more professionals working in the field of healthcare and disease prevention. It is not only the Covid-19 pandemic, which has highlighted this urgent need.
Buk bilong Pikinini (BbP) believes it is vital to seek to influence children from a young age to focus on their education and consider pursuing a career as a nurse, pharmacist, paramedic or doctor.
Today two children Bagu Douglas Avi and Pauline Bagu enrolled in BbP’s Early Childhood Education program learnt what it takes to become a Pharmacist and a Nurse from the professional team at City Pharmacy Limited (CPL).
The children inspected the pharmacy, saw at all the medication and got to try out equipment such as stethoscopes and a nebulizer required to carry out the respective roles.
Photographer Roan Paul and Visual Artist Robert Weber captured images of the children learning from the CPL Pharmacist Editha Edawi and Nurse Lowen Sihare. We these images readers and videos will be published and used as part of the BbP early learning program.
BbP has published a series of books entitled “When I Grow up – I want to be a Teacher, – Pilot, – Store Manager, -Paramedic, – ICT Officer and – Farmer. These new books will be launched during Book Week in August.
CPL has been generously sponsoring BbP’s Library Learning Centre on Tatana Island since 2014 and has also provided ongoing health and hygiene awareness events to all Port Moresby-based libraries.
Fostering healthy habits from a young age cannot be underestimated and BbP is grateful for this additional support for the program.
Leanne Resson, BbP Executive Officer said: “We are deeply grateful to CPL for providing the children with vital insight into the world of healthcare.
We are confident that the readers and videos will inspire the children to want to pursue careers in this field.
By seeing role models in action, the children will be able to understand that they too can aim for such careers and the readers and videos will help to demystify these roles for the thousands of children who will be reading them. A great thank you to CPL for your partnership and support for the children of PNG.”
Sir Mahesh Patel, OBE, CPL said: ” We were so excited when approached by BbP about this project. Being a Pharmacist myself, it has been my dream to see
more locally qualified pharmacists in PNG- which till date has been short-coming.
I hope that this book will inspire the youth of today to embark on the journey (mine started in Fiji, 45 years ago!) And I can say the same for Nurses- CPL has embarked on a programme to deploy registered nurses in our Pharmacy outlets to lessen the burden on the public health system, and as CPL grows, so will the need for more qualified nurses.”