The call from Rumginae hospital came before my first flight in the morning. A boy has been bitten by a snake, probably a death adder, and was to be brought to a hospital as soon as possible. We got the plane ready as fast as we could. However, when I arrived in Haewenai the boy's breathing was already laboured. Haewenai is only 10 minutes North of Rumginae, but since surface repair work was still in progress I was not able to land there. So, I had to bring the boy to Kiunga.
As I stopped the plane in front of the MAF building in Kiunga I was relieved to see that Doctor Sharon from Rumginae was already waiting for us. The boy was loaded unto a stretcher and immediately received an anti-venom. His condition, however, was rather unstable and the drive over the dirt road to Rumginae rough, so it was decided to bring him to the hospital in Kiunga.
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| Doctor Sharon injecting the anti-venom |
You might be wondering, why the boy was not admitted to Kiunga hospital in the first place, and why a doctor from Rumginae travels 45 minutes to treat a patient if there was a hospital nearby. The answer is unfortunately too common in PNG: Three out of six hospitals in the Western Province do not have doctors. Kiunga hospital is one of them.
A few days after the Medevac Doctor Sharon told me that the boy did not survive. She also told me that the snake bite actually happened on the day before the Medevac, meaning, the people of Haewenai waited a whole day before calling for help. They would have had ample time to bring the boy down to Rumginae in a canoe.
So, why did they not do this? Why did they wait until an airplane was needed and it had become too late anyway? There are no easy answers to those questions, since reasons are complex and mostly routed in PNG culture. An animistic worldview for example, still hinders a lot of people to seek professional medical help in a hospital. What can a doctor do if spirits and powers are the cause of an illness or a person has been bewitched? Only traditional rituals can help, people may think – if anything at all. Just this past week a woman decided not to be airlifted to the hospital with her very sick baby – and it probably has not survived this decision.
All these experiences clearly show, that change in the Papua New Guinean society cannot happen through aid work only. More significant is a change of the traditional worldview, including the religious. For this reason exactly, I am convinced that the M (mission) in MAF is still of great importance for the well-being of this country and its inhabitants.
