The Continuing Struggle In PNG To Provide Hospital Beds

Wednesday, 30 April 2025, 3:59 pm
Article: RNZ

Don Wiseman, RNZ Pacific Senior Journalist

Papua New Guinea's Health Minister Elias Kapavore and other health officials have been summoned by Prime Minister James Marape to meet this Friday to address issues of hospital overcrowding.

TVWAN reports the country's leading gynaecologist, Dr Glen Mola, has raised concerns about mothers giving birth on the floor of Port Moresby General Hospital's (PMGH) maternity wing.

Marape has intervened, and he wants the delays in a Japanese government grant aid project to upgrade the maternity wing at Port Moresby General to be addressed.

He said the hospital management had not confirmed acceptance of the project.

The Prime Minister said if Dr Mola says there is a crisis, authorities must act immediately and plan for the future.

He said the hospital was built for a city of under 200,000, but the population is now nearly five times that.

Marape said he has emphasised urgent short-term interventions and reaffirmed broader plans, including suburban hospitals, and a new National Capital District hospital in partnership with the NCD and development partners.

In January 2021, PMGH chief executive Dr Paki Molumi said the discrepancy between demand and supply was causing overcrowding at the hospital.

He said at the time that the hospital served over a million people in NCD, Central and Gulf Provinces.

RNZ Pacific spoke with our PNG correspondent Scott Waide about the ongoing overcrowding issues.

(The transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.)

DON WISEMAN: We've known for a long time that there's been issues in the health sector. In Papua New Guinea not enough room in the hospitals. But I think possibly the thing for Papua New Guinea is the population soaring. Now I don't know if there have been too many new hospitals built in the last 10 years, so how bad is it?

SCOTT WAIDE: Having spoken to various patients who have been to the hospitals, particularly in the Port Moresby General Hospital, and Lae's Angau Hospital, there is a serious problem in terms of bed space for the maternity wings, especially labour delivery facilities for the women.

There have been ongoing situations where women have had to give birth on the floor, and that has existed for several years now. It is a situation that doctors and nurses, who are directly dealing with it on the frontline, are either too afraid to speak out or have been warned not to speak out about it.

The media does not always have access to that information. It always comes out to other sources only when there is a major crisis, like somebody actually dies, then we get information out of it.

In recent weeks, Dr Glen Mola has come out and spoken about it again. It is not a new issue, but coming from a doctor who is prominent and on the frontlines dealing with it, has a huge impact on the manner in which people respond to it, especially the government.

DW: Even the prime minister, who incidentally, has called a meeting with his health minister to explain, later this week, even he is pointing out that Port Moresby General Hospital was built for a population of 200,000 and the city's nearly five times that size.

SW: Now there are two issues that have to be considered when you are talking about population. One is the actual population of Port Moresby, and Lae and Mt Hagen as well - the residents who live there.

The other problem that is compounding this population increase is the migration of people from the upper Highlands, who are facing issues of tribal violence, migrating in large numbers into Mount Hagan, Eastern Highlands, Western Highlands, Morobe, especially Lae and Port Moresby.

So you have got these large numbers of people. The facilities [for] education [and] health, are unable to deal with that influx of people coming in.

Previously, towards the end of last year, the Western Highlands governor raised concerns about the number of people coming into Mt Hagen and called on MPs in the upper Highlands to deal with the issues, as he put it.

Deal with the issues and contain the crisis that is happening in the highlands so that we stem the migration, or at least mitigate the problems associated with this steady migration of people, migration of large numbers of people.

DW: I guess, as well as avoiding tribal fighting, these people will be coming, supposedly for the better services that they would find in the cities. But what is being done to improve these facilities?

SW: The government is saying that it is working to improve the facilities. The problem there is that the amount of money that the Health Department gets is not according to what is stipulated in the national budget.

For instance, between 2023 and 2024 the Health Department just got a third of its total budget, which was about 200 million [kina]. It actually needs about anything between 300 and 400 million per year. The other thing is a lot of the money is tied in District Support grants. It is going directly to the districts. It is not coming into things like the recurrent budget where it is really needed.

So it is that problem that needs to be sorted out within Finance [Ministry], and also the availability of cash coming into the system. A budget can be made in Waigani in November and passed in November, but the actual cash coming to a department like Health, they are always drip fed.

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