Hela Provincial Health Authority

The cost of the construction is K10 million.

At the official opening of the facility in Tari, PM Marape thanked partners who made this come to fruition. 

He said this is the kind of partnership the country needed. 

He also thanked the Australian Government, Santos and Oil Search for its kind donations in ensuring the construction of the emergency wing of the hospital. 

The opening was witnessed by people of Hela as well as Kevin Gallagher, CEO of Santos, Oil Search MD Leon Buskins, Australian High Commissioner Jon Philp and Minister for Health Jelta Wong.

A lack of road transport means the nearest health facility may take hours or even days to reach. This is challenging enough for healthy people, but when a person is sick, pregnant or very young or old, access to these services can be impossible.

So instead of requiring communities to come to health centres, the Hela Provincial Health Authority (Hela PHA), with support from Oil Search Foundation (OSF), is bringing the health clinics to them through an integrated health patrol. 

For Sister Anne Aku, a nurse in Hela Province, it not only was care for patients she provided. Her compassion extended to her fellow nursing colleagues.

Sr Aku has served the people of Hela as a nursing officer for 28 years. Completing Grade 10 from the then Tari High School and later obtaining a certificate in General Nursing from Goroka School of Nursing in 1992, she worked tirelessly to serve Wabia Health Centre, a facility run by the United Church Health Services.

Organised by the Hela Provincial Health Authority and its partners at the Wabia Health Centre, the initiative saw two highly regarded eye doctors from LAILA Foundation and Port Moresby’s Pacific International Hospital (PIH) treat cataracts patients in the province for the best part of a week, with help from two eye theatre nurses and an optometrist.

During its first term, the Board secured over K61 million from donors for improved health with well over half of this funding from one key donor – Oil Search.

“This seems like a lot of money,” Botten said, “but there was and continues to be a lot to do.”

“In 2016 the new PHA was still struggling to establish a new provincial hospital which in 2015 only had only one doctor, a handful of health workers, was without an executive team and completely lacked corporate human resource and financial management capacity.

This follows the highest commendation of an ‘Unqualified’ rating from the Auditor General’s Office (AGO) recently.

This achievement was officially made known to the Hela Provincial Health Authority (PHA) during its board meeting last week, after the AGO completed an audit of the hospital’s 2016 financial statement of accounts.

This is a result of a K10 million Incentive Fund grant to fund the redevelopment of the Hela Provincial Hospital in Tari.

The Incentive Fund is a jointly managed program delivered through the Papua New Guinea-Australia Partnership.