Deteriorating health sector being covered up by bureaucrats, says Dr Naipao
THE President of PNG’s National Doctors Association Dr James Naipao has brought out the stark contrast between what is being said about PNG’s health sector and what is actually being done.
Through a correspondence with Dr Naipao, this paper ascertained that he was unhappy with the way Health Department bureaucrats and the Health Minister were seemingly painting a pretty picture for health-related issues in the country when the reality of things were in actuality, bad.
“Why is the higher hierarchy of the Department of Health and the Health Minister, Sir Puka Temu, openly saying all is well in health service delivery in the country when health workers on the ground are saying the opposite?” he asked last week.
He furthered his querying by suggesting the mentioned entities could be attempting to protect a serious trend of negligence and incompetence by ignoring them and speaking about the positives only.
Dr Naipao said while it was important to bring out positive stories on health around the country to ensure the populace is kept on an even keel, it was just as important to report the negative aspects of the health sector. Commenting in support of Dr Naipao’s sentiments was prominent and long serving medical practitioner Dr Glen Mola, who stated in a recent publication, that PNG and its media fraternity in particular, seemed prone to covering up the deteriorating state of PNG’s health sector by dressing up news coverage with so called “positive stories”.
Dr Mola went on to suggest that there is a serious case of the media being controlled by the State.
“Like in North Korea where the State directs mainstream media entities to publish and broadcast only positive news on government-related matters, has the PNG government taken control of its media fraternity?” said Dr Mola.
“Recently I have noticed that our daily print media are only printing positive stories about the government. In the run up to the Pacific Games in 2015 and the APEC meetings in 2017, our PM stated on many occasions that he wanted to see positive stories printed in the daily media.
“Positive stories are great when there are positive stories to tell. However, if there are negative stories to tell, then the media should not hide them or avoid publishing them just because the government puts pressure on them to do so,” said Dr Mola.
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