Transcript
Mt Hagen hospital, the country's third-largest, is completely bare of supplies.
Doctors have been unable to stitch wounds or provide antibiotics, and in some cases, desperate staff have had to use patients' clothes because there's no gauze.
The hospital's deputy chief executive, David Vorst, said it had been struggling for months as the Department of Health hasn't provided funding or replenished supplies.
"The hospital is actually out of everything. We've got doctors and nurses working very difficult circumstances delivering babies, for example, without any gloves to protect them. We've got election-related violence at the moment and people are getting angry because they've come into the Accident and Emergency department and are unable to be treated."
The secretary of the PNG National Doctors Association, Sam Yockopua, said the situation in Mt Hagen was not unique, with many hospitals struggling to stay afloat.
"About eight hospitals have actually shut down their doors or partly shut down for emergencies only. At the trend at which we are going, by the end of this month 90 percent of the hospitals will shut down."
In Kokopo, on East New Britain, the administrator of St Mary's Hospital, Albert Seri, said his hospital was backed up by church funding, but the situation is still tough. We have not been getting everything that we ordered from the medical store, so what happened is that we were going to medical pharmacies to buy drugs, basically, and we have been able to keep our heads above water."
The crisis had been building for months, if not years.
In PNG, drugs and supplies are procured centrally by the Department of Health, but Mr Vorst said Mt Hagen only receives about 30 percent of the supplies it asks for each year.
"We've had to, for years actually, supplement what we're provided for centrally by spending money which we're actually not budgeted for," he said.
Dr Yockopua said this had been exacerbated since the government made healthcare free in 2014.
Now, hospitals are no longer able to charge a fee to cover costs, and the government is only paying about 10 percent of what's needed.
"Because of the free healthcare policy, what they normally charge a little bit to the patients - like, for example, medicines 1 kina for one, or x-ray 2 kina, stuff like that. Now no fees as such. Everybody's fee free. So effectively no money generated in the hospitals to buy urgent consumables and medicines."
Then, in December, the tender for drug procurement lapsed, leaving the country without a supplier for six months.
But last week, with hospitals on the brink of collapse and doctors threatening to go on strike, the government finally took charge.
The government's chief secretary, Isaac Lupari, said five new tenderers have finally been approved, an announcement that brought a collective sigh of relief.
In Mt Hagen, Mr Vorst said his hospital has managed to cobble together some money to get extra supplies, which should start to arrive from this week.
"The stocks will start flowing and I expect that will happen for probably four or five days before we're completely restocked and there now appears to be tenders at a national level sorted out so that what we're doing - hopefully - is only a bridging thing where we're buying stuff until the central supply system starts to work again."
But while shelves may slowly start to be restocked, many doctors and administrators agreed the new tenders will only go so far, and much more needs to be done to fix the crisis once and for all.
