{"id":14269,"date":"2021-01-27T11:33:57","date_gmt":"2021-01-27T11:33:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=155107"},"modified":"2021-01-27T11:33:57","modified_gmt":"2021-01-27T11:33:57","slug":"port-moresby-hospital-under-strain-with-overcrowding-says-doctor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/27\/port-moresby-hospital-under-strain-with-overcrowding-says-doctor\/","title":{"rendered":"Port Moresby hospital under strain with overcrowding, says doctor"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"pf-content\">\n<p><em>By Lulu Mark in Port Moresby<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Papua New Guinea&#8217;s biggest hospital is straining to provide medical services to the growing population of the capital Port Moresby \u2013 with an estimated growth rate of 3 percent annually, a medical executive says.<\/p>\n<p>Port Moresby General Hospital chief executive officer Dr Paki Molumi said overcrowding, especially in the emergency department, was a big concern.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe population increases at 3 percent a year yet services remain the same,\u201d Dr Molumi said.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hrw.org\/news\/2020\/04\/09\/papua-new-guineas-health-system-unprepared-covid-19#\"><strong>READ MORE:<\/strong> PNG&#8217;s health system unprepared for covid-19<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cThere is a discrepancy between demand and supply which is reflected by the overcrowding.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He said sometimes patients died while waiting to be attended to because of the long queue.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe hospital serves over a million people in Port Moresby, Central and Gulf,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLimited staff are struggling to meet the demand which reduces the quality of care given to a sick person.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Specialised care needed<\/strong><br \/>\n\u201cAs a specialist hospital, it should be concentrating on delivering specialised care so that our people do not need to go overseas for that.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cInstead, we are taking on primary and secondary care as we do not have a separate hospital for the growing population in the city.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The city has an estimated population of 385,000.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Molumi was responding to a complaint on social media about a woman being admitted at the emergency ward on Saturday but was not attended to until Monday night.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is no hospital for Central and the Gulf Hospital cannot offer adequate services,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHence, all come to the Port Moresby General Hospital.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe overcrowding at the emergency department and outpatients is a reflection of a defective health service we are offering to our people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dr Molumi sees a separate hospital for the National Capital District Health Authority and Central to look after primary and secondary healthcare, leaving Port Moresby General Hospital to concentrate on referrals as the best solution to the overcrowding.<\/p>\n<p>Right now, he said, the hospital was dealing with \u201ceverything\u201d which was putting a strain on existing resources.<\/p>\n<p><em>Lulu Mark is a reporter for The National. Asia Pacific Report republishes The National articles with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<p class=\"syndicated-attribution\">This post was originally published on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/2021\/01\/27\/port-moresby-hospital-under-strain-with-overcrowding-says-doctor\/\">Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Lulu Mark in Port Moresby Papua New Guinea\u2019s biggest hospital is straining to provide medical services to the growing population of the capital Port Moresby \u2013 with\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":400,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,387,6,3230,4,12,366,3231,3232,1573,1716,3233,1743],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14269"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/400"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14269"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14270,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14269\/revisions\/14270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}