Manpower

The Health Minister and the Department of Health Secretary, Dr Osborne Liko, came to Lae, Morobe Province, to see and hear firsthand the challenges that lead to medicine shortage in the country.

Their two-day fact-finding trip included a visit to the ANGAU Memorial Provincial Hospital on Wednesday (December 6th), and the AMS yesterday. 

The Lae AMS receives, stores and distributes medical drugs to at least 200 health facilities in Morobe Province as well as the other four provinces of Madang, Eastern Highlands, Manus and Northern (Oro).

Shortage of manpower is one biggest issue faced by health centres and hospitals in the country. This is not conducive to the delivery of health services because it weakens the quality of services delivery especially to the rural population where the bulk of the people live.

He said the judiciary received the biggest number of election petitions from 2012, over 106 petitions.

Last year, during 2016 Pacific Judicial Conference, Sir Salamo said 109 election petitions were filed from 2012 elections during one of his presentations on the Quality of Justice in the Pacific.

“The judiciary has cleared all election petitions 12 months before the issue of writs and we have also cleared the reviews in the Supreme Court arising from election petitions,” he said today.