By Kevin McQuillan
New modelling has revealed that Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea will have vaccinated less than 20% of their adult populations by the end of this year and it could take five years to vaccinate just one-third of PNG.
New research from the Lowy Institute shows slow rollout for COVID-19 vaccinations among some Pacific island countries threatens to undermine their economic recovery from the pandemic, with some countries unlikely to reach basic levels of vaccination among their citizens within five years.
While some countries have already achieved near-universal vaccination coverage, others, like PNG, are recording among the lowest vaccination rates in the world.
Lowy Institute Research Fellow Alexandre Dayant blames poor health service delivery and ‘more worryingly’, misinformation as leading to outright vaccine resistance.
Papua New Guinea is trailing most of the Pacific in the three key measures of dealing with COVID. In mid-November, less than 2% of the population had been fully vaccinated, the daily case rate sat at about 300 and the total death toll about 465, although the actual cases and death rate figures are believed to be considerably higher.
“Fiji shows what can be done when supply is no longer a challenge,” says Dayant. “Through tough measures, including a no-jab, no-job policy in the public service, Fiji is getting ready to re-open its economy to much-needed tourist visitors.”
“We don’t know the true extent of the problem because testing levels are pathetically low,” Dr Henry Ivarature, at ANU’s Pacific Security College in Canberra, told Islands Business.
He says the low vaccination rate can be attributed to a number of factors, chief among them is lack of education and awareness about the nature of diseases not helped by illiteracy.
“One of the first group of people that should have been educated is church leaders,” says Ivarature.
“The situation was not aided by the belief held by many COVID-19 is a foreign disease and that Papua New Guineans are naturally immune.”
And, he says having a policeman in charge of managing the pandemic is ‘morally and ethically wrong’. It is a medical issue, a health problem, not a law-and-order issue.”
Supply disruption
Australia has provided most of the supply to PNG, but the rollout has been disrupted or abandoned after death threats and attacks on health workers, according to local media reports.
Marape told parliament in mid-November that 90 per cent of COVID deaths were of unvaccinated people, which he blamed on people deliberately spreading misinformation, particularly on social media, such as Facebook.
Complacency
Ivarature believes Marape and his MPs have also nurtured a degree of complacency by disregarding COVID-19 protocols shortly after the lock-down was lifted last year.
He points out they were tripping around the country for political purposes, not wearing masks and shaking hands wherever they went.
“He even allowed foreigners into the country without complying with COVID regulations.”
Provincial health authorities ‘weak’
Former Australian High Commissioner to PNG, Ian Kemish, writes that perhaps most troubling of all is the sense that many Papua New Guineans regard COVID as just another health challenge to add to the list of health issues, among them maternal mortality, malaria and tuberculosis, facing the country.
Marape announced that K74 million (US$21 million) had been distributed to all provincial health authorities last year, but the Government was yet to receive plans back from those authorities on how they planned to spend the funding.
Ivarature says this shows the “serious weaknesses in the decentralisation of health services, health administration, incapacity of provincial health authorities and the inability of political leadership in provinces to deal with health crisis.”
In November, Marape announced that all 89 MPs will be given K2 million for COVID-19 on top of their K10 million District Services Improvement Programme (DSIP) funds – a boost for their personal slush fund, says Ivarature.
“PNG people should really wake up,” says Ivarature, “because this is their money but such accountability culture and ‘ownership’ of public funds has never matured to the level where they demand financial scrutiny, transparency and public accountability.”
The acting Director for Medical Services at Port Moresby General Hospital, Dr Kone Sobi, has echoed warnings that things are likely to get worse with a fourth outbreak likely next March, as new outbreaks appear to be occurring every six months.
The recent surge in cases has prompted the World Health Organisation to install three plants to produce oxygen at Port Moresby General Hospital, after demand increased by almost 200%, according to Health Minister, Jelta Wong. Australia is also providing three tonnes of supplies including PPEs, oxygen and medicines to the country’s 10 most affected provinces.
Electioneering
PNG is scheduled to go to an election next year, with the polling date now tentatively booked in for June 2022.
While the government has introduced a voluntary “no jab, no job” policy, Ivarature says the elections mean that many MPs are cautious about pushing that message.
In the coming months there’ll be more politicians, and would-be politicians, heading out and holding events, and likely more big gatherings. It’s another issue for health authorities to consider as they look to the long-term management of COVID-19 in the country.
