Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Port Moresby (Agenzia Fides) – Half of the hospitals and healthcare services present in the country are run by Christians and one-fourth of them are run by the Catholic Church. Carol Kidu, PNG Minister for Community Development, recently told a United Nations forum in Melbourne that nuns, priests, and other religious workers in PNG's healthcare were the nation's “unsung heroes.” In fact, thanks to the healthcare programs of the Church, the number of HIV cases in PNG are at a plateau. Dr. Mike Toole, head of Melbourne's Burnet Institute Centre for International Health, told the conference that despite a massive increase in the number of people being tested in PNG, the number of new HIV infections each year have stopped increasing and may be declining. The new national HIV prevalence rate, drawn from voluntary testing of pregnant women at ante-natal clinics, is estimated at 0.9 per cent. A rapid expansion of HIV testing centers - from 15 to 178 in the past five years - has seen 250,000 men and women volunteer for tests in the past two years, with HIV less prevalent in both rural and urban populations. The forum at the UN conference heard presentations by two nuns who work as nurses, midwives and HIV counselors, and by a priest who works as a surgeon. All practice in remote parts of the Highlands, where the HIV spread is most concentrated, and where tribal and domestic violence are also in epidemic proportions. (AP) (Agenzia Fides 1/9/2010)
