PNG Flexi Care

PNG Flexi Care PNG Flexi Care is a privately owned charitable health care provider and contractor in Papua New Guinea

R.I.P. our dear "GERALDINE OVA KUISA"
14/04/2026

R.I.P. our dear "GERALDINE OVA KUISA"

SOME HEALTH WORKERS TOO MUCH STEALING AND SELLING THEIR CLINIC MEDICINE STOCKSRural and remote aid posts and health cent...
12/04/2026

SOME HEALTH WORKERS TOO MUCH STEALING AND SELLING THEIR CLINIC MEDICINE STOCKS

Rural and remote aid posts and health centres have been short of medical supplies for about six months now and villagers are tired of coming for medical help only to find the aid post closed with a NIL STOCK sign on the door.

Even when there is nil stock the health workers should still be on duty to examine patients and make diagnosis and write prescribed treatments in their clinic books so that patients can have a choice to go to a private pharmacy in the town or go to another clinic with stock to get the medicine they need.

Writing NIL STOCK on the door and using this as an excuse to take the day off and hide in the house while still getting paid salary is not good enough.

We know it’s difficult when the government medical supply system is dysfunctional and officers in the supply chain are corrupt and the supply of medicines is always small and irregular but health workers still need to be on duty at their posts, in the same way that teachers still need to turn up to class even if they have run out of chalk.

However, the bakrap government medical store supply system is not the only reason why we see the NIL STOCK sign on the door all the time.

The other problem is widespread STEALING of drugs and other supplies by some corrupt health workers. Some of these health workers are just dishonest thieves while others are normal CHW's who justify pinching medicines and selling them to chinese shops and market tables and even to their own patients by complaining that they are over worked and under paid – sometimes not paid at all – therefore they think they are entitled to sell some government medical supplies to supplement their incomes.

Wrong! If you are not happy with your work and pay as a health worker then “look for another job, don’t steal life-saving medicines that belong to the patients of your clinic.”

This low level corruption in the clinics directly results in the deaths of local people especially children who could have been saved if medicines were not always out of stock or running out quickly after every re-supply because of the theft, illegal sale and misuse of the drugs especially antibiotics.

Donors and charities would really like to be able to donate medical supplies to village aid posts and health centres in need, but knowing that the donations will simply be stolen and sold makes it hard for them to donate.

Kaikai blong tingting for health workers.
Yupla OIC at every aid posts are responsible for stopping stealing in your own clinics by using proper stock inventory system and you have to challenge other staff who are not accounting for drugs that they dispense from the stock.

30/03/2026

HEALTH WORKERS – EXPLAIN PROPERLY PLEASE, NO MORE SECRET CODES

When attending CHW training schools our health workers are taught how to use clinical abbreviations when writing in patients clinic books.
They write in secret code things like QID TDS STAT BP RX DX PNA PTB RDT PCM CMP PV CXR USS IV IM

Why? In order to write faster? In order to use up less space in the clinic book? In order to look smart? “Look at me I can write with Greek letters like delta and theta and I can write abbreviations of Latin words like q.i.d. and t.d.s.” ?

It’s just silly to write “Ǿ else heard” instead of “nothing else heard”.

And it seems like some health workers and doctors are taught how to write in messy handwriting that looks like Arabic.

We don’t need health workers writing in “secret code” that only another health worker can read.

Patients and caregivers need to be able to read clinic notes too, to make sure they understand what is the sickness and what treatment has been prescribed.

Some health workers treat their patients like we are all uneducated primitives, they don’t even explain what’s wrong with us or explain why they have prescribed this particular medicine or advise possible side effects of the medicine or give health care advice.

They just give a prescription or a bag of medicine and say “go away and drink this” without even explaining anything.

Health workers like this need to look for another job.

It’s not hard to write clinic notes clearly and in plain English. In fact it could be a matter of life and death to make sure the patient knows the right dose of their medicine because sometimes it's not written on the medicine bottle or bag.
Does q.i.d mean drink four tablets once a day or drink 1 tablet four times a day? If patients don’t know and they drink 4 tablets at once they will overdose themselves so clinicians need to write “1 tab 4 x a day” instead of “1 tab q.i.d.”

No more secret codes, its just not necessary.

FYI the following "secret codes" are often used in our clinic books:

QID four times a day
TDS three times a day
BD two times a day
STAT treatment given immediately
IV intra venous (drip)
IM intra muscular (injection)
BP blood pressure
RX treatment
DX diagnosis
PNA pneumonia
PTB pulmonary tuberculosis
RDT rapid diagnostic test (for malaria)
PCM paracetamol
CMP chloramphenicol
PV plasmodium vivax (malaria)
CXR chest x-ray
USS ultra sound scan

TERAPO CLINIC OUTREACH AT MOVEAVEMany thanks to Melanie from Terapo clinic for coming down to Moveave to see patients fr...
06/03/2026

TERAPO CLINIC OUTREACH AT MOVEAVE
Many thanks to Melanie from Terapo clinic for coming down to Moveave to see patients from time to time. PNG Flexi Care is happy to help with transport and treatment supplies.

THANKS TERAPO CLINICWed 19 Nov our village health volunteer at Moveave Mrs Helen Sefe Ivoro has es**rted another boatloa...
23/11/2025

THANKS TERAPO CLINIC
Wed 19 Nov our village health volunteer at Moveave Mrs Helen Sefe Ivoro has es**rted another boatload of sick people to Terapo clinic. Even though the Terapo clinic is almost completely out of stock of medicines at the least the nurses were able to examine the patients and write notes in their clinic books. Patients can then look for their medicines from private pharmacies and shops. Many thanks to OIC Melanie and team at Terapo clinic (under Gulf Catholic Health Services). It's a very difficult time at the moment with the health systems under extreme strain because of no medical supplies.

YAWS OUTBREAK IN GOILALA AND MALALAUA DISTRICTSSince the beginning of this year there has been an outbreak of Yaws in so...
28/09/2025

YAWS OUTBREAK IN GOILALA AND MALALAUA DISTRICTS

Since the beginning of this year there has been an outbreak of Yaws in some villages of the Goilala and Malalaua Districts.
These two districts share a common border which might explain how the disease has spread between the two areas.
Yaws is a viral infection that causes big, ugly open sores on the body that look similar to tropical ulcers but are different because they are CONTAGIOUS meaning that the sores can be passed from one person to another just by touching (mainly kids but adults too), and because they don't heal up when you give common antibiotics like amoxicillin.
However the treatment is very simple, just one dose of azithromycin tablets will kill the infection and the sores will heal up like magic after one week.
The problem is that it’s very easy to catch the infection again from another person so the Yaws just keeps going round and round the village and the only way to stop it for good is to give the tablets to everybody in the district at the same time. This is called a mass drug administration (MDA). It’s a very big job and quite an expensive exercise because thousands of people have to be reached and given the tablets.
The Central Provincial Health Authority and the Gulf Provincial Health Authority are aware of this outbreak of Yaws and both PHA’s said they will organise MDA but nothing has happened yet. Recent news indicates that village people have brought this disease to Port Moresby as well.
PNG Flexi Care's private contracted health workers working out in the rural villages and NCD settlements are just struggling to treat all the people turning up with these horrible sores.
Unfortunately some of the junior CHW’s in the local clinics and health centres are not experienced with recognising Yaws sores and they are misdiagnosing the sores as “ulcer” and giving the wrong treatment.
If you or your family members have these sores you need to go to a clinic and get treatment with azithromycin.

MOVEAVE HEALTH SUPPORT SERVICES SUSPENDEDOur sponsored transport to Kerema Hospital for Moveave patients on last week Fr...
13/07/2025

MOVEAVE HEALTH SUPPORT SERVICES SUSPENDED
Our sponsored transport to Kerema Hospital for Moveave patients on last week Friday 11 July was the last one for time being. We have been paying from our own company pocket for transporting patients to Terapo, Malalaua and Kerema health facilities and for bringing our private health workers down to Moveave to do mobile outreach clinics and giving out free medicines but our own funds have run out and we have to suspend our services for now, until our financial situation improves. This is very sad because the nearest alternative clinic to Moveave is at Terapo which is often out of stock of medicines, and for those TB patients and emergency cases who need to get themselves to Kerema Hospital for treatment it's almost impossible because of the ambulance hire fees.

IT'S A RECORD ! 130 PATIENTS TREATED IN ONE DAY AT MOVEAVE Our health team has treated 130 people during a one day mobil...
01/07/2025

IT'S A RECORD !
130 PATIENTS TREATED IN ONE DAY AT MOVEAVE

Our health team has treated 130 people during a one day mobile outreach clinic at Moveave yesterday Monday 30th June. Another 70 patients who put their clinic books on the table were turned away because we ran out of medicines, otherwise it would have been 200 people treated.

Our amazing health workers Esther and Gabriel worked really hard from 9am to 9pm to see as many sick people as possible because it was only a one day clinic. People were still turning up after dark after coming home from somewhere and hearing about the arrival of the health team.

The mobile clinic was held in a clan building (thank you !) because the Moveave aid post building is still under land dispute.

Other aid posts in the district like Terapo and Malalaua have been experiencing shortages of medical supplies and the five thousand people of Moveave area have been struggling to access health care. Our team arrived with K6,000 worth of medicines we bought from private pharmacies in Port Moresby and nearly all meds were dispensed in the one day.

Most patients were treated for malaria, chest infection, pneumonia, asthma, arthritis, infected wounds, gastro, ear aches, red eye and skin conditions. People with more complicated problems needing dental treatment, xrays and scans, surgery, vaccinations or TB testing were given referrals letters to Malalaua Health Centre, Kerema Hospital (TB) or Port Moresby.

The total cost of bringing private contract health workers from POM and operating this one day outreach clinic was around K9,000. The service was provided free of charge to the village people by PNG Flexi Care using money from our boss's own pocket (Mr Aaron Hayes), no funding from anywhere.

ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL RUN TO KEREMA HOSPITAL TODAYPNG Flexi Care again hired the Malalaua Health Centre ambulance to take a...
26/06/2025

ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL RUN TO KEREMA HOSPITAL TODAY
PNG Flexi Care again hired the Malalaua Health Centre ambulance to take a group of Moveave patients to Kerema Hospital for their tests and treatments.
Moveave Clinic is still closed (5 years now) and the nearest other clinic Terapo Clinic has been run out of medicine stocks for over a month now.
Malalaua HC is very overwhelmed with sick people coming in from all over the district because many of the aid posts are either closed or have run out of medicine stock.
Even Kerema Hospital itself is low on supplies because somebody broke into the pharmacy and stole medicine supplies two weeks ago.
PNG Flexi Care is trying to help in our own small way and using our own private money on charity basis but there is a limit to what we can do.

HEALTH SERVICES FOR MOVEAVE VILLAGE - how we are helpingMoveave is a huge village of about 5,000 people on the lower Tau...
18/06/2025

HEALTH SERVICES FOR MOVEAVE VILLAGE - how we are helping

Moveave is a huge village of about 5,000 people on the lower Tauri River in Malalaua District. The only way to get there is by boat or walking through the swamp, there are no roads. The village is divided into two "camps": Heatoare and Heavala (Heavora), each represented by a separate ward councillor.

A brand new clinic building and staff house was opened at Moveave by the Governor General on Independence Day in 2019 but it only operated for 2 years before being closed due to an incident which caused the health worker to leave. Since that time the Provincial Health Authority has apparently been unable to post a new nurse there due to various issues including some kind of dispute over the land on which the clinic was built.

Since the closure of their clinic in March 2021, Moveave people have had to travel up-river by motor dinghy to the clinics at Terapo or Malalaua or downstream to the aid post at Mirivase/Kukipi to seek medical treatment. This has proven difficult for very sick patients, those who can’t walk properly and people who have no money to pay the boat fare / boat hire, so they just stay home and stay sick or even die. Other times they make it to Terapo clinic and find a sign on the door that says “sorry no medicine” and come home frustrated from a wasted trip and still sick. Medicine shortage seems to be a big problem in Gulf Province this year. Some health workers in the province are known to be stealing quantities of medicines from their clinic stocks and selling them to local shops, canteens and market sellers. A lot of stolen medicines are being sold up at Fish Creek where the gold panners get malaria and pneumonia.

PNG Flexi Care has been helping out at Moveave by:

1. Bringing our private health workers to Moveave village from time to time to operate outreach clinics and give out free medicines from our own supplies

2. Hiring dinghy transport to transport Moveave people to Terapo clinic once a week

3. Paying fuel for the Malalaua ambulance to transport Moveave referral patients and TB patients to Kerema Hospital once a fortnight

4. Arranging St John Ambulance pickups from Iosipi to POM for emergency cases

5. Assisting referral cases and surgical cases to come to POM for their treatments and providing our staff to es**rt them to the big hospital for their appointments and scans and operations to make sure they get their treatment.

6. Providing Whatsapp video call consultations for patients at Moveave who cannot travel to a clinic. Our nurse or consulting doctor in POM talks to the patient on video call to understand their health problem and either refers them to hospital or prescribes medicine which we supply for the patient.

We have engaged a village health volunteer at Moveave, Mrs Hellen Ivora to:
- coordinate help for sick people
- es**rt patients to Terapo clinic once a week and Kerema Hospital once a fortnight and make sure everyone gets treated
- check on patients later to make sure they are drinking their medicines and getting better and remind them to attend their next check ups
- be a contact point for the village people if they need to ask for clinic help
Hellen lives at Heavala and her phone contact is 7416 8624.
Our service coordinator in POM is Glynn Iruru 7082 7337.

All these helps we are providing free of charge to Moveave people, we are paying for all the services and medicines from our own pocket with no funding from anywhere, so we are a bit limited in what we can provide. Some weeks when we are short of cash flow we don't run any clinic trips.

If we had more money available we would:
- run clinic trips to Terapo and Malalaua twice a week and Kerema once a week
- run outreach clinics at Moveave once a month
- assist more patients with cancer and other serious conditions to come to POM for treatment
- run health awareness programs in the village to help people avoid from catching TB, malaria and other common sickness

The main thing we would like to see happen in future is the re-opening of the Moveave Clinic and if funding is available PNG Flexi Care is prepared to run it on private contract basis under Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) with Gulf Provincial Health Authority if they are unable to staff and operate it themselves.

AARON HAYES
Director

YAWS OUTBREAK IN GOILALAYaws is a horrible skin disease that mainly occurs in children and youths. Yaws causes big round...
17/06/2025

YAWS OUTBREAK IN GOILALA

Yaws is a horrible skin disease that mainly occurs in children and youths. Yaws causes big round sores on the legs and arms. The sores look similar to tropical ulcers but they are different, they don't heal up by themselves. The Yaws sores can cause damage to the bones and flesh, leaving the victim with damaged or disabled legs or arms later.

Since early this year there has been an outbreak of Yaws in the Aiwara River area of Goilala District, especially in the Kileipi ward. People in the villages sent photos to prove it and some Aiwara people travelling down to Port Moresby brought the disease with them which caused a secondary outbreak in Goilala communities in Port Moresby. Yaws is highly contagious and spread by person-to-person contact, especially kids touching each other while sitting or playing together.

Yaws is easy to treat with one single dose of medicine (tablets called Azithromycin also known as Zithromax) and our Flexi Care health workers have successfully treated some Yaws victims in Port Moresby settlements. For children and adults who do not have any Yaws sores, drinking the tablets will help them prevent from catching it.

Aiwara River area is very remote in the Owen Stanley mountains and there are no clinics currently operating in the wards there (Kerau, Kileipi and Sopu). Somebody needs to go up there with a big box of Azithromycin tablets and do a mass administration of the medicine (MDA) to treat those who have the sores and those who are at risk of catching it. Just drinking two tablets one time only is all it takes to cure a child, and it only costs K2 per treatment.

Central Province Health Authority is aware of the outbreak and we understand they were trying to include Yaws MDA in their first quarter district health outreach program but apparently they are still "looking for money" to pay for charters to uplift their staff and supplies for the first quarter program.

We at PNG Flexi Care want to sponsor our own private team of health workers to walk up to Kileipi ward on foot to do Yaws treatment and other health checks in the villages there and we wrote to CPHA asking their blessing to proceed with that (at our own cost, free of charge to CPHA and the local people) but CPHA did not reply our emails so we have been holding back because we do not want to proceed without permission in case we might tread on somebody's toes.

AARON HAYES
Director

PART-TIME / CASUAL POSITIONS - POM based • REGISTERED NURSE for the role of clinical services coordinator (office based)...
02/05/2025

PART-TIME / CASUAL POSITIONS - POM based

• REGISTERED NURSE for the role of clinical services coordinator (office based)
• COMMUNITY HEALTH WORKERS Grade 2, 3, and 4 for mobile clinics and village to village health patrols in rural / remote areas
• ASSISTANT PHARMACIST for coordinating distribution of medicines to rural aid posts
• ADMIN ASSISTANT for undertaking office support tasks. Tertiary graduate preferred.

Send expressions of interest by e-mail only to:
The Director, PNG Flexi Care
png.flexi.care@gmail.com

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Port Moresby

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+67577157062

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