By HERON KANEMA
TEAM Rubicon, an emergency medical team (EMT) from United States of America (USA) has arrived in Port Moresby to assist Provincial Health Authorities (PHA) and to boost Covid-19 emergency response system in hospital and health facilities in Papua New Guinea.
This has been possible through request made recently by the PNG government through WHO in PNG, for International Emergency Medical Team’s assistant for Covid-19 pandemic in the country.
According to a spokesperson, Team Rubicon is comprised of medical doctors and nurses and logisticians who came to support clinical care or case management and they will be deployed into hospitals and health facilities across the country where the need is greatest.
The US Ambassador to PNG Enrin Elizabeth McKee has also added that they are here as Non-Government Organization (NGO) and they are volunteers requested for support through W.H.O.
“This type of voluntarism and support you see from medical experts, logisticians and leadership are volunteers from America, demonstrates how America partnership can help,” she added.
The controller David Manning however said the team will be deployed to Western Highlands Province to assist health workers of Mt. Hagen General Hospital.
He said there is a surge in Covid-19 cases in WHP so the team will be deployed there to assist the PHA in terms of medical care and logistics support for Covid-19 emergency response.
Manning further highlighted that more help will be coming from other countries and they are expected to be deployed to those provinces where there is surge in Covid-19 cases.
He said the government will continue to work with other countries in terms of medical assistance because PNG health system has gone through many challenges and that has affected the health system in the country over the years.
“As you are very much aware the country is going through some significant challenges at this point in time in terms of our responds to Covid-19, and as part of our national response, we have to strategize again and restructure ourselves to appropriately respond to our current stages and the part of this restructure is meant to request the assistant from overseas,” he reiterated.
Mr Manning also announced that the EMT form Australia who came earlier about two weeks ago are currently assisting the health workers of POMGEN hospital and also have in line the EMT from Germany who are coming to join.
These teams will be deployed to provinces that have surge in Covid-19 so that they will assist the PHA to boost their health system of dealing with covid-19 emergency response.
Meanwhile, the Health Secretary Dr. Osbone Liko has thanked the US Ambassador to PNG, the team Rubicon and the United States Government for their commitment to assist PNG health workers on the Covid-19 emergency response.
“We can’t thank you enough from the depth of our hearts for you assistant for our sufferings and covid-19 that has affected us,” he said.
Mr Liko also revealed that they already have the national rollout plan to carry out the rollout program of second batch of 132,000 AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines to arrive from India next week Tuesday.