Caption: Health Secretary Pascoe Kase signing agreement as
CS Acting Commissioner Michael Waipo looks on.
By MATTHEW VARI
CORRECTIONAL Services (CS) and the Department of Health have signed
a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) last week in Port Moresby, that will see both
organizations partner in the common goal of providing easy access to health
services in all the country’s prisons through trained staff.
The agreement aims to improve the current standards of the
health services provided in all CS establishments throughout the country.
It was signed between CS Acting Commissioner Michael Waipo
and Health Secretary Pascoe Kase.
The agreement will also lessen the reliance on the public
health system to only those prisoners that are seriously ill, as past
experiences have seen prisoners escape when being brought in for treatment at
hospitals.
CS Director for Health Services, Inspector Napina Yumb, said
that the agreement would see the security risk being greatly reduced and
quality of their services not only to the prisoners, but also the families of
warders and people around the prison communities as well.
“Many of our health workers in our provincial institutions
are community health workers and we need people to come in and advice and talk
to us so we can go the right way in terms of the type of health standard we can
deliver,” she said.
“At the moment we are now to operating on our own, and if you
are a prisoner, there is no need to be brought in to public hospitals or other
health facilities used by the general population.”
“Most of the surrounding communities rely on the services we
provide because we are the only means of receiving vital health care in some of
those areas.”
She added
that with the agreement, health specialists would now be at the prisons to
determine if ill prisoners require more specialized health service, or if their
ailments are serious to warrant transfer to public facilities outside prison
walls.
“Previously we did not have that, and now that the health department
has come on board we are so happy that we now have full ownership of the
prison,” Yumb said.
“It is where the right people will come in to assist us
without having the security risk of bringing in prisoners in among the
general populous, for curative and preventive measures.”
She also revealed plans by the prisons organization to sign
Memorandums of Understandings (MoUs) with respective provinces around the
country that host prison facilities- with four major provinces like the
Autonomous Region of Bougainville, East New Britian, Eastern Highlands, and
Madang.
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