East Sepik Province in PNG gets innovative to solve health issues

Scoop

11-07-2025

, RNZ Pacific Senior Journalist
The governor of East Sepik Province in Papua New Guinea has announced a partnership with a local pharmacy to improve access to drugs and medicines.
A deal between City Pharmacy Limited, the Provincial Health Authority, and the Provincial Government aims to ensure that Sepik residents have fast access to quality medicines, free of charge.
The provincial government is making a payment of PGK 500,000 (about US$118,000) from the Provincial Services Improvement Program (PSIP) to the pharmacy company.
The company has outlets in Wewak and Maprik, with others planned in Angoram and Boram Hospital.
RNZ Pacific asked the East Sepik Allan Bird if half a million kina would be enough.
(This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.)
ALLAN BIRD: No it won't. We've got three million in the budget for that. We're just starting off with half a million because, like everything that's new, no one's ever tried this in Papua New Guinea before. But I'm sick and tired of waiting for a corrupt, incompetent national government to respond, because I cop all the flack when there's no medicine in East Sepik, even though it's not my job.
So, I've decided to bite the bullet, and fortunately, there's a local company that's honest and transparent. It's not one of these 'fly by night' companies that sort of do deals in dark corners, and there's massive kickbacks.
City Pharmacy Limited has been operating in Papua New Guinea for, I don't know, maybe 30 or 40 years. It's owned by our Super Fund. Essentially, the Papua New Guinean workers own a majority of the shares there. So that gives me the confidence to work with them.
Of course, that they've had two pharmacies in my province operating, you know, almost 200 kilometers apart in my province. There's reach there.
When we run out of medicine at the hospital, people come running to me, or they run to another member of parliament asking for us to help them pay for medicine, that's one, they can't find us, then the poor doctor or the nurse or some other medical worker who's already struggling to look after their own family has to fork the money out of their own pocket.
This system that we're using has been used by City Pharmacy Limited for, I think, a number of years, with the medical insurers in the country.
I'm just really pleased that they're happy to try it out with us. We're running a trial, and then every month, we get a report and we have a look and see how it's working. Because the last thing you need is it's hard enough accessing medical services, not just in my province, but in the whole country.
But once people get to the end of the line and they get diagnosed, and the clinician turns around and says, 'Look, sorry, we got no medicine. Here's the prescription. Can you go buy it?' This person's been waiting, traveling, waiting, all of that is probably 24 hours, 36 hours just to get that far and be told, Look, you got to go buy your own medicine. And so given that sort of scenario I want to be able to sleep well at night knowing that my people are being looked after.
If the system works out, and the whole country wants to adopt it. I've been critical of the medical suppliers in Papua New Guinea since the day I walked into parliament. It's one of the biggest rorts in this country, and it continues to be so.
DON WISEMAN: It's not your only concern about the health sector in East Sepik, is it? You've been at the [Boram] Hospital recently and you weren't impressed?
AB: I knew for a while. I knew, like a year and a half ago, that because the rest of the health system - we're rebuilding the entire health system in my province.
So let me just start by saying that. But I didn't know that we had makeshift facilities because all the other facilities around the province are not functioning, and this specialist hospital, which, when we first designed it, we didn't design it with what you might call an outpatient facility, because it's not meant to have one.
But in the absence of functioning medical facilities around the province, we've got no choice. We got to bite the bullet. So I allocated the money sometime last year, about 18 months ago.
I hate these government systems that take so long. And I was quite crook on Monday morning as well Sunday and at 2am in the morning I had to go to the hospital. And I think maybe God wanted me to be sick so I could see all of this. So when I saw it, it broke my heart. I mean, these are the people I represent. So I've said to them, Look, you guys, have 60 days to rectify this.
The money is there. I want this facility built, you know, I don't want to come here and see the same thing happening again. So we've got really crazy systems, you know what I mean? And they're so cumbersome, you know, it just doesn't help us.
But I've said to them, 'Look, I respect the processes, but can we push it a little bit faster? Because 18 months is simply unacceptable.' Now you've got people lying around in the corridor, out in the open with an IV in their arm, sleeping on the floor.
That would be unacceptable anywhere else in the world. It should also be unacceptable here.