The National Department of Health needs K25 million every year for children’s immunizations.
Manager for Population and Family health, Dr Edward Waramin said that GAVI supports the National Department of health each year by purchasing vaccines to be used in immunization campaigns however they stopped in 2022.
“GAVI stopped since we have oil and gas and other natural resources, but they will continue to support in other ways.”
“From this year onwards, the government of PNG is now required to provide approximately K25M every year.”
“Every year hopefully there will be an increment of K1M or more because of inflation and other factors.”
He added that the department doesn’t have the capacity to come up with that amount of money in a short time.
However, the department works alongside the treasury and finance to get the funding that they need to carry out the immunization campaign.
He said that when the department was getting the support from GAVI, they didn’t plan on what would happen after the funding stopped. Dr Waramin said for the government to provide the funding they need to be provided with the necessary calculations and budgeting.
He thanked partners such as World Health Organization and UNICEF for their continuous support towards the immunization campaign.