Over 200 midwives across the country kicked off the PNG Midwifery Society 4th national symposium that will run for 3days with the theme: “Impact of Covid-19 on maternal New-born and Child Health.”
The future of this country depends on good healthy people and that all comes down to our health system and health workers as human resource is the most important resource of any country.
PNG Midwifery Society Interim President Sr. Mary Sitaing said the sole purpose of this symposium is to bring together midwifes to equip them with the growing knowledge and skills to tackle the number of maternal mortality rates in the country.
“I think we’ve done really well. In the last few years our maternal mortality rate was 733 per hundred thousand but it has gone down. And that shows that there’s a lot of work being put in to midwifery schools to develop and up skill our midwives in the country.”
Sr. Sitaing said, even though this number has gone down for the country, our maternal mortality rate in the country is still high compared to other Pacific nations.
Officially opening the symposium, Health Minister Dr. Lino Tom said, PNG has one of the worst statistics in the Western Pacific region.
“In terms of the maternal mortality rate, we have about 171 per hundred thousand, 20 deaths per thousand and 40% of supervised deliveries which is quite low.”
He also stated that, family planning will be one of his major priorities in his 100-day plan, saying that the population growth has outgrown the country’s ability to provide for its people.
He says unless and until the country has some major economic activity happening, the population growth rate must be cut down.
“The law and order situations and social issues we have is because the bulk of the youth are restoring to bizarre ways of actually expressing themselves because we cannot engage them anymore.”
“There are not enough institutions to cater for the young people. We have not created enough jobs.”
Other priorities in Dr Tom’s 100-day plan includes looking at increasing the health workforce, improving health workers’ working conditions, strengthening the systems of governance in the health system and the drugs and medical supply issue.
And with this world moving forward into the Tech World, Dr. Tom wants a digitalized health system so that people will know who is holding what positions to address the issue of people not working but still being paid, especially those holding positions in the rural areas but spending more time in urban areas rather than working.