The national Government will continue its free primary health care and subsidised specialist health services this year, says Health Minister Michael Malabag.
When outlining the 2014 priorities on Friday, Mr Malabag said K20 million had been allocated this year to continue the free primary health care (FPHC) and subsidised specialist health services (SSHS) policy. "To effect the FPHC and SSHS policy, the Public Hospital Charges Regulations and Dental Charges regulations were amended with all fees reduced by 50 per cent as well as specifying what services was subsidised and free under each schedule." He said K20 million was allocated in the 2013 Budget to offset user fees collected by health facilities. It was distributed to all public hospitals, including churches. In 2014 another K20 million was made available by the Government to support the implementation of the FPHC and SSHS policy. "The Department of Health will continue to review strategic complementary policies to the FPHC and SSHS policy have been undertaken and are ready for submission to NEC early 2014. "This includes the national Medicines Policy and the Health Sector Partnerships Policy which are now completed and require NEC approval." Mr Malabag said 2013 had seen some improvements in the area of Public Health and 2014 would see more activities to improve issues in the different areas of public health. He said to address increased cases of Drug Resistant tuberculosis, the department embarked on a national control strategy. "To combat the spread of the multiple drug resistance TB in the country, prevalence of the disease in the country has to be known. With assistance from WHO, a drug resistance survey to identify at bay the extent of this problem has commenced in four sites: NCD, Western Province, Madang and Morobe and will be completed in June 2014,’’ he said. Mr Malabag said further nationwide interventions would be determined after this study, otherwise other ongoing activities were progressing well as planned. For Malaria and HIV, Mr Malabag said the prevalence in both diseases had continue to decline in the last three years. "Malaria, for example, saw a drop in incidence from 250 to 170 per 1000 population between 2008 and 2012. The prevalence of HIV is below one per cent meaning that we do not have a generalised epidemic as previously thought, but rather, a concentrated epidemic,’’ he said. "These results reinforce the fact that improved funding and staffing are required to see improvements in our indicators. We need to translate these lessons to other diseases like TB and provide adequate funding and human resources to make an impact." Mr Malabag said for family health issues, the department had supported the implementation of various programs to improve immunisation. "We have seen slow improvement through Supplementary Immunisation Activity with 70 per cent coverage and the first round of Tetanus Toxoid coverage reached 77 per cent. PNG Facts/Post Courier Comments are closed.
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