Basic Health
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Papua New Guinea
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Primary health care concept for the World´s most remote regions – Lighthouse project in Papua New Guinea

Organisation: Katim Tasol e.V.
Partner organisation in partner country: Morobe Provincial Health Authority, Lutheran Health Services
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Situation: 

Papua New Guinea is criss-crossed by an approximately 200 kilometre wide, branching mountain range characterised by steep valleys and barely accessible plains. The nature of the country favours the isolated tribal formation that has taken place in New Guinea. Even today, over 80% of the population still live in the rural and very inaccessible regions. In combination with political instability and the severe shortage of doctors (2018: <0.7 doctors per 10,000 inhabitants), this leads to difficult medical care for the population.
 

Objectives:

Improving access to high-quality and sustainable healthcare in regions that are very difficult to access through a replicable concept.
 

Indicators:
  • The number of days per year on which access to basic health care is guaranteed by the supervised health centre.
  • The number of defined critical therapy applications per year (examples: Intravenous administration of antibiotics, oxygen administration, surgical interventions, treatment of birth injuries). 
  • The number of telemedical consultations per year.

 

Measures:
  • Infrastructural upgrade of an Aidpost through a specially developed modular clinic unit and equipping with suitable medical technologies and equipment
  • Ongoing in-service training program 
  • Regular intensive workshops on site
  • Telemedical support
  • Regular mentoring for local health workers
  • Evaluation and presentation of results to key healthcare providers
Sustainability:

The project is orientated towards the new national health plan "back to the basics", which primarily encourages concepts that aim to improve rural healthcare. The project is being carried out in collaboration with church and state healthcare providers.
The skills-based training of rural health workers with telemedicine-supported access to external help aims to address the immediate shortage of qualified health personnel and thus improve basic healthcare in the long term. 
Furthermore, the infrastructural improvements are intended to provide a model example of how the usually non-functioning infrastructure can be improved in a cost-effective and sustainable manner. The module with handpicked equipment is low-maintenance, durable and should guarantee decades of use.
 

Special features:

By putting together the individual pieces of training, support and innovative medical technologies, we want to demonstrate for the first time a holistic and practically replicable concept for improving basic healthcare in very remote regions.

Further information can be found here.