Having a TB laboratory at the rural Hula health centre at Hula is a dream come true for Community Health worker, Waula Araga.
Waula employed by the United Church East Central Papua region as a Disease Control Officer expressed satisfaction during the launching of the TB Laboratory on 20th February, jointly by the ChildFund and the United Church of East Papua Region and the Central Provincial Health Authority.
Waula Araga, Community Health worker and Disease Control Officer in charge of HIV/AIDS, leprosy and Covid-19 surveillance reporting and vaccination at Hula Health Centre is very happy that a TB laboratory has been extablished at the health centre.
Since 2017 when he was employed by the United Church health services for East Central Papua region, he had struggled to keep surveillance of diseases, especially TB and Leprosy because patients data was difficult to manage due to the distance they had to travel to do tests in Port Moresby.
“I’m very happy that there is a laboratory installed by the ChildFund PNG to assist us in our work which is very challenging because we see around 14,000 population in our catchment, starting from Babagarugu village, Riwali and coming up to Hula,” Araga exclaimed.
He added that Hula Health Centre caters for patients as far as Ginigolo, Mugele up to KK or Keapara, Alukuni Karawa, Hood Lagoon with a population of 25,000 though it is only meant for 14,000 population.
“But the health centre doesn’t have enough equipment I would say and it’s quite not to the standard of health centre. But we try our best to work and serve the people around our catchment area.”
“Due to the laboratory being installed we are very happy because it’s gonna help us deal with TB, in this catchment area because our catchment as I reporting TB disease, HIV and leprosy. So we are very happy to have a laboratory installed so it will make our work very easier to detect and it will also speed up our work in detecting those diseases, especially TB and leprosy.”
Having the laboratory at their doorstep is very convenient however, a major obstacle still remains and that is medicine supply always running out often.
“The facility makes order with reports and data collected monthly, and quarterly we do our M-Supply order but supply doesn’t come in time which makes our facility runs out of medicine,” Araga said.