Thousands have marched through major city streets and rallied in small towns across Aotearoa New Zealand as part of today’s “mega strike” of public workers.

More than 100,000 workers from several sectors walked off the job in increasingly bitter disputes over pay and conditions.

It was billed as possibly the country’s biggest labour action in four decades.

• READ MORE: Thousands of nurses, teachers and doctors take part in NZ’s ‘mega strike’
• Gerard Otto’s G News video commentary on the ‘mega strike’
• More photos and speech videos
• Other NZ public service reports

Strike action in Auckland’s Aotea Square.    Video: RNZ

Among those on strike were doctors, dentists, nurses, social workers and primary and secondary school teachers.

Several rallies were cancelled by severe weather in the South Island and lower North Island.

Many carried signs and chanted, cheered and danced as they made their way down.

Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said it was embarrassing that the government was labelling the action politically motivated.

“Of course this is political. Politics is about power and it’s about resources and it’s about who gets to make decisions that saturate and shape our daily lives,” she said.

There was a smaller, earlier rally in the morning in Henderson.

Tupe Tai from Western Springs College, who has been teaching for several decades, said the situation had become untenable.

“We’ve got really underpaid and overworked teachers, they need that support.”

She also said teachers needed an environment where they could work on the curriculum, have time to do it, but also have a life.

Hamilton
The crowd swelled to an estimated 10,000 in Hamilton’s rally.

Kimberly Jackson and her daughter were at the rally on behalf of her husband, a senior doctor who had to be at the hospital working as part of lifesaving measures.

“For us it is personal, but it’s also about this country that I love, that I’ve grown up in, and I can see terrible things happening in this country and I feel really passionate about public health care,” she said.

Jackson said she had seen the system deteriorate over her lifetime.

Chloe Wilshaw-Sparkes, regional chair of the Waikato PPTA said teachers were on strike because the offers from the government were not good enough.

“They’ve been saying ‘get round the table, have a conversation,’ but a conversation goes two ways and I think they need to be reminded of that,” she said.

Principal of Hamilton East School, Pippa Wright, was at the rally with some of the school’s teachers.

She said she believed in the NZEI’s principles, and she wanted changes which would ensure schools had really good teachers in front of students.

Wright also said pay rates needed to rise.

“So they’re not treated like graduates, and we need better conditions for teachers, and nurses, and all the public sector,” she said.

Northland
In Whangārei, the weather was sweltering and a stark contrast from conditions further south.

About 1200 people marched through several city blocks, after leaving Laurie Hall Park.

As well as teachers, nurses and other union members there were students and patients showing support.

Sydney Heremaia of Whangārei had heart surgery a few weeks ago but said he was marching to show his concern about staffing levels and creeping privatisation.

Deserei Davis, a teacher at Whangārei Primary School, feared there would be no new teachers soon if pay and conditions were not improved.

“We’ve voted to strike because we feel that the government hasn’t been addressing our issues, and especially at bargaining,” she told RNZ.

“The government scrapped pay equity claims. And that was a shocking blow to women in general, but an absolute shock and a blow for us women in education. And it’s completely scrapped it.

“More importantly, we are standing up for our tamariki, who are really poorly resourced in schools, in terms of support and the requirements coming down on teachers on a daily basis, on a monthly basis.

“It’s burning out our teachers. We’re fighting for our support staff, our teacher aides, the most vulnerable of all our staff who don’t have job security.”

She said the ministry’s offer was “absolutely atrocious”.

“$1 extra an hour over a period of three years. Like let that sink in. 60 cents one year, maybe 25 cents the following and 15 cents the following year. How does that keep up with the rate of inflation?”

Northland emergency doctor Gary Payinda told RNZ it was “pretty important to support our essential public services”.

“We don’t like what’s been going on. Then the understaffing, the refusal to acknowledge the severity of the understaffing and then, of course, pay offers that are below the cost of living, which means . . .  pay cut. None of those things seem fair to the group of public workers that are working harder than ever under huge demand.”

Striking staff called in after power outage
A union organiser said striking staff returned to Nelson Hospital to care for patients after its backup generator failed in a power outage.

The top of the South Island lost power on Thursday as wild weather hit the country. It began to be restored from 9.30am.

PSA organiser Toby Beesley said the generators at the hospital started, but it’s understood they blew out an electrical board, which led to a 45-minute total power outage.

“The senior leadership at Nelson Hospital reached out to us under our pre-agreed crisis management protocol that we’ve been working on with them for the last three weeks for an event of this nature, and they asked for additional PSA member support, which we immediately agreed to to protect the community.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

It is being billed as quite possibly New Zealand’s biggest labour action in more than 40 years.

It is the latest in a growing series of strikes and walkoffs this year, but the sheer size of it today means much of New Zealand will come to a halt.

Several public sector unions say the strike is going ahead in spite of wild weather across the country — though plans for some rallies may change due to conditions.

• READ MORE: RNZ’s live news blog

Striking senior New Zealand doctors have hit back at the Health Minister’s attack on their union for “forcing” patients to wait longer for surgery and appointments, due to their 24-hour industrial action.

Respiratory and sleep physician Dr Andrew Davies, who was on the picketline outside Wellington Regional Hospital, said for him and his colleagues, it was “not about the money” — it was about the inability to recruit.

“We’ve got vacant jobs that we’re not allowed to advertise,” he said. “It’s lies that they’re not getting rid of frontline staff.

• READ MORE: Gallery: Doctors, health workers challenge NZ government over national crisis

“The job is technically there on paper, but if you’re not going to advertise for the job, you’re not going to fill it.

“In our department, we’ve waited months and months and months to fill some jobs, and you don’t just get a doctor next week. It takes six months for them to come.”

Dr Davies said no-one wanted to strike and have their patients miss out on care, but thousands of patients were already missing out on care every day, due to staff shortages.

“Every week, we’ve got empty clinics,” he said. “There is space in the clinics that’s not being used, because there’s not a doctor in the chair there.

“While, today, that’s 20 percent of the work of the week gone, because we’re on strike, in some departments, it’s 20 percent every week.

“Every day of the week, there’s a 20 percent deficit in the number of patients people are seeing.”

5500 doctors on strike
Nationwide, about 5500 members of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists are on strike until 11:59pm today, causing the cancellation of about 4300 planned procedures and specialist appointments.

In a social media post, Health Minister Simeon Brown blamed the union for the disruption, saying an updated offer last week — including a $25,000 bonus for those moving to “hard-to-staff regions” — was rejected by the union, before members even saw it.

Union executive director Sarah Dalton said she would be very happy to facilitate a meeting between doctors and the minister — or he could accept the invitation to attend its national conference.

“They would love to feel like someone up there was listening,” she said. “They don’t at the moment.

“We need to move away from rhetoric, and actually have some time and space for meaningful discussion.

“That’s one of the reasons we’re on strike today. After eight months of negotiating, there was nothing on the table from the employer.

“It was only after we called for strike action that anything changed, so let’s do better.”

Critical workforce shortages were undermining patient care and the current pay offer, which amounted to an increase of less than one percent a year for most doctors, would do nothing to fix that, Dalton said.

“How do you tackle vacancies? You put more time and effort in good terms and conditions for your permanent workforce, and you stop spending spending $380 million a year on locums and temps.

“We shouldn’t have that heavy reliance on those people, so we’ve got to change it.”

NZ training doctors for Australia
After many years of study subsidised by the New Zealand taxpayer, Maeve Hume-Nixon recently qualified as a public health specialist, but may yet end up going overseas.

“I actually thought last year that I would have to go to Australia, where I would be paid another $100,000 minimum, because there were no jobs for me here, basically.

“In the end, I managed to get an emergency extension to my contract and this has continued, but I don’t have security and it’s a pretty frustrating position to be in.”

Neurologist Dr Maas Mollenhauer said he was not able to access the tests he needed to provide care for his patients.

“I’ve seen patients that I have sent for urgent imaging, but they didn’t receive it, and then I got an email from one of my colleagues who was on call, telling me that patient had rocked up to the Emergency Department and, basically, the front half of their skull was full of brain tumour.”

Cancer patients waiting too long
Medical oncologist Dr Sharon Pattison said the health system had reached the point where it was so starved of people and resources, it had become “inefficient”.

“Everyone is waiting for everything, so everything takes longer, and we are waiting until people get seriously ill, before we do anything about it.”

The government’s “faster cancer treatment time” target — 90 percent of patients receiving cancer management within 31 days of the decision to treat — would not give the true picture of what was happening for patients, she said.

“For instance, if I have someone with a potential diagnosis of cancer, there are so many points at which they are waiting — waiting for scan, waiting for a biopsy, waiting for a radiologist to report the scan to show us where to get the biopsy.

“That radiologist may be overseas, so if I want to talk to that specialist I can’t do that. Then the wait for a pathologist to report on the biopsy can now take up to 6-8 weeks.

“We know that, for some people with cancer, if you wait for that long before we can even make your treatment plan, we’re going to make your outcomes worse.

“The whole system is at the point where we are making people more unwell, because we can’t do what we should be doing for them in the framework that we need to.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The late Member of Parliament Jeton Anjain and the people of the nuclear test-affected Rongelap Atoll changed the course of the history of the Marshall Islands by using Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior ship to evacuate their radioactive home islands 40 years ago.

They did this by taking control of their own destiny after decades of being at the mercy of the United States nuclear testing programme and its aftermath.

In 1954, the US tested the Bravo hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll, spewing high-level radioactive fallout on unsuspecting Rongelap Islanders nearby.

• READ MORE: Rainbow Warrior back in Marshall Islands on nuclear justice mission
• Four decades after Rongelap evacuation, Greenpeace makes new plea for nuclear justice by US
• Eyes of Fire: Rongelap — the Rainbow Warrior evacuation microsite — David Robie
• Other Rainbow Warrior reports

For years after the Bravo test, decisions by US government doctors and scientists caused Rongelap Islanders to be continuously exposed to additional radiation.

The 40th anniversary of the dramatic evacuation of Rongelap Atoll in 1985 by the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior — a few weeks before French secret agents bombed the ship in Auckland harbour — was spotlighted this week in Majuro with the arrival of Greenpeace’s flagship Rainbow Warrior III to a warm welcome combining top national government leaders, the Rongelap Atoll Local Government and the Rongelap community.

“We were displaced, our lives were disrupted, and our voices ignored,” said MP Hilton Kendall, who represents Rongelap in the Marshall Islands Parliament, at the welcome ceremony in Majuro earlier in the week.

“In our darkest time, Greenpeace stood with us.”

‘Evacuated people to safety’
He said the Rainbow Warrior “evacuated the people to safety” in 1985.

Greenpeace would “forever be remembered by the people of Rongelap,” he added.

In 1984, Jeton Anjain — like most Rongelap people who were living on the nuclear test-affected atoll — knew that Rongelap was unsafe for continued habitation.

There was not a single scientist or medical doctor among their community although Jeton was a trained dentist, and they mainly depended on US Department of Energy-provided doctors and scientists for health care and environmental advice.

They were always told not to worry and that everything was fine.

But it wasn’t, as the countless thyroid tumors, cancers, miscarriages and surgeries confirmed.

As the desire of Rongelap people to evacuate their homeland intensified in 1984, unbeknown to them Greenpeace was hatching a plan to dispatch the Rainbow Warrior on a Pacific voyage the following year to turn a spotlight on the nuclear test legacy in the Marshall Islands and the ongoing French nuclear testing at Moruroa in French Polynesia.

A Rainbow Warrior question
As I had friends in the Greenpeace organisation, I was contacted early on in its planning process with the question: How could a visit by the Rainbow Warrior be of use to the Marshall Islands?

Jeton and I were good friends by 1984, and had worked together on advocacy for Rongelap since the late 1970s. I informed him that Greenpeace was planning a visit and without hesitation he asked me if the ship could facilitate the evacuation of Rongelap.

At this time, Jeton had already initiated discussions with Kwajalein traditional leaders to locate an island that they could settle in that atoll.

I conveyed Jeton’s interest in the visit to Greenpeace, and a Greenpeace International board member, the late Steve Sawyer, who coordinated the Pacific voyage of the Rainbow Warrior, arranged a meeting for the three of us in Seattle to discuss ideas.

Jeton and I flew to Seattle and met Steve. After the usual preliminaries, Jeton asked Steve if the Rainbow Warrior could assist Rongelap to evacuate their community to Mejatto Island in Kwajalein Atoll, a distance of about 250 km.

Steve responded in classic Greenpeace campaign thinking, which is what Greenpeace has proved effective in doing over many decades. He said words to the effect that the Rainbow Warrior could aid a “symbolic evacuation” by taking a small group of islanders from Rongelap to Majuro or Ebeye and holding a media conference publicising their plight with ongoing radiation exposure.

“No,” said Jeton firmly. He wasn’t talking about a “symbolic” evacuation. He told Steve: “We want to evacuate Rongelap, the entire community and the housing, too.”

Steve Sawyer taken aback
Steve was taken aback by what Jeton wanted. Steve simply hadn’t considered the idea of evacuating the entire community.

But we could see him mulling over this new idea and within minutes, as his mind clicked through the significant logistics hurdles for evacuation of the community — including that it would take three-to-four trips by the Rainbow Warrior between Rongelap and Mejatto to accomplish it — Steve said it was possible.

And from that meeting, planning for the 1985 Marshall Islands visit began in earnest.

I offer this background because when the evacuation began in early May 1985, various officials from the United States government sharply criticised Rongelap people for evacuating their atoll, saying there was no radiological hazard to justify the move and that they were being manipulated by Greenpeace for its own anti-nuclear agenda.

This condescending American government response suggested Rongelap people did not have the brain power to make important decisions for themselves.

But it also showed the US government’s lack of understanding of the gravity of the situation in which Rongelap Islanders lived day in and day out in a highly radioactive environment.

The Bravo hydrogen bomb test blasted Rongelap and nearby islands with snow-like radioactive fallout on 1 March 1954. The 82 Rongelap people were first evacuated to the US Navy base at Kwajalein for emergency medical treatment and the start of long-term studies by US government doctors.

No radiological cleanup
A few months later, they were resettled on Ejit Island in Majuro, the capital atoll, until 1957 when, with no radiological cleanup conducted, the US government said it was safe to return to Rongelap and moved the people back.

“Even though the radioactive contamination of Rongelap Island is considered perfectly safe for human habitation, the levels of activity are higher than those found in other inhabited locations in the world,” said a Brookhaven National Laboratory report commenting on the return of Rongelap Islanders to their contaminated islands in 1957.

It then stated plainly why the people were moved back: “The habitation of these people on the island will afford most valuable ecological radiation data on human beings.”

And for 28 years, Rongelap people lived in one of the world’s most radioactive environments, consuming radioactivity through the food chain and by living an island life.

Proving the US narrative of safety to be false, the 1985 evacuation forced the US Congress to respond by funding new radiological studies of Rongelap.

Thanks to the determination of the soft-spoken but persistent leadership of Jeton, he ensured that a scientist chosen by Rongelap would be included in the study. And the new study did indeed identify health hazards, particularly for children, of living on Rongelap.

The US Congress responded by appropriating US$45 million to a Rongelap Resettlement Trust Fund.

Subsistence atoll life
All of this was important — it both showed that islanders with a PhD in subsistence atoll life understood more about their situation than the US government’s university educated PhDs and medical doctors who showed up from time-to-time to study them, provide medical treatment, and tell them everything was fine on their atoll, and it produced a $45 million fund from the US government.

However, this is only a fraction of the story about why the Rongelap evacuation in 1985 forever changed the US narrative and control of its nuclear test legacy in this country.

Rongelap is the most affected population from the US hydrogen bomb testing programme in the 1950s.

By living on Rongelap, the community confirmed the US government’s narrative that all was good and the nuclear test legacy was largely a relic of the past.

The 1985 evacuation was a demonstration of the Rongelap community exerting control over their life after 31 years of dictates by US government doctors, scientists and officials.

It was difficult building a new community on Mejatto Island, which was uninhabited and barren in 1985. Make no mistake, Rongelap people living on Mejatto suffered hardship and privation, especially in the first years after the 1985 resettlement.

Nuclear legacy history
Their perseverance, however, defined the larger ramification of the move to Mejatto: It changed the course of nuclear legacy history by people taking control of their future that forced a response from the US government to the benefit of the Rongelap community.

Forty years later, the displacement of Rongelap Islanders on Mejatto and in other locations, unable to return to nuclear test contaminated Rongelap Atoll demonstrates clearly that the US nuclear testing legacy remains unresolved — unfinished business that is in need of a long-term, fair and just response from the US government.

The Rainbow Warrior will be in Majuro until next week when it will depart for Mejatto Island to mark the 40th anniversary of the resettlement, and then voyage to other nuclear test-affected atolls around the Marshall Islands.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Two Palestinian resistance groups have condemned “the brutal assault” on prisoners at Ofer Prison, saying it was “barbaric criminal behaviour that reflects the fascist and terrorist nature of” Israel.

In the joint statement, Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) called the attack a “miserable attempt” by Israel “to restore its shattered prestige”, reports Al Jazeera.

They called on the world to expose “these inhuman crimes against the prisoners”, which “blatantly violate all international conventions and norms”.

• READ MORE: Welcome to hell: The Israeli prison system as a network of torture camps
• Gaza hospital chief Abu Safia detained, tortured in Israeli jail: Lawyer
• Other Israel’s war on Palestine reports

The statement called on the international community to intervene to protect the “prisoners, stop criminal violations against them, document them and work to hold the criminal occupation leaders accountable”.

The statement came after Palestinian authorities said Israeli forces had raided a section of Ofer Prison, west of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, and assaulted detainees.

“Prisoners were beaten and sprayed with gas,” the Palestinian Prisoners Media Office said.

Persistent serious allegations of torture and abuse of Palestinian prisoners — many who have not been charged or are held on administrative detention — and beatings right up until the release of detainees under the ceasefire have been made over all six exchange events so far.

Medical director severely tortured
Last week, lawyers representing Kamal Adwan Hospital’s medical director Dr Hussam Abu Safiya met him for the first time since he was detained by Israeli forces in north Gaza last December 27.

He told them he was severely tortured with electric shocks and was being denied needed medication.

Lawyer spells out torture allegations over Israeli detention of doctor.  Video: Al Jazeera

Samir Al-Mana’ama, a lawyer with the Al Mazan Center for Human Rights, described his brutal torture in a failed attempt to “extract a confession” from him in an interview with Al Jazeera.

Al-Mana’ama said Dr Abu Safiya suffered from “an enlarged heart muscle and from high blood pressure” and was beaten up and refused treatment for the heart condition.

Transferred to Ofter Prison on January 9, he was held in solitary confinement for 25 days and interrogated nonstop by the Israeli army, Israeli intelligence and police, the lawyer added.

There was “no legal justification” for Abu Safia’s arrest and no evidence against him, the lawyer said.

Since the interview, Israeli authorities said he was being held under an “unlawful combatant” law — despite his status as a civilian doctor — stripping him of any rights as a detainee.

Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Amman in Jordan, said the doctor was one of hundreds of medical workers taken from Gaza by Israeli forces to the notorious Sde Teiman detention camp and other Israeli military prisons.

The fate of Palestinian Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, who was “arrested” by Israeli forces last month after defiantly staying with his patients when his hospital was being attacked, featured strongly at yesterday’s medical professionals solidarity rally in Auckland.

The Israeli government bears full responsibility for the life of Dr Abu Safiya’s life amid alarming indications of torture and ill-treatment since his detention.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has received information that Dr Abu Safiya’s health has deteriorated due to the torture he endured during his detention, particularly while being held at the Sde Teyman military base in southern Israel.

• READ MORE: Israel orders patients, staff to ‘evacuate’ last two hospitals in northern Gaza siege – NZ protest
• Israel faces mounting pressure over detention of Gaza hospital chief
• Dr Hussam Abu Safiya profile – Frontline Defenders
• Who is Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, director of key Gaza hospital detained by Israel?

Euro-Med Monitor warns of the grave risk to his life, following patterns of deliberate killings and deaths under torture previously suffered by other doctors and medical staff arrested from Gaza since October 2023.

Euro-Med Monitor has documented testimonies confirming that Israeli soldiers physically assaulted Dr Abu Safiya immediately after he left the hospital on Friday, 27 December 2024. He was then directly targeted with sound bombs while attempting to evacuate the hospital in compliance with orders from the Israeli army.

According to testimonies gathered by Euro-Med Monitor, the Israeli army subsequently transferred Dr Abu Safiya to a field interrogation site in the Al-Fakhura area of Jabalia Refugee Camp.

There, he was forced to strip off his clothes and was subjected to severe beatings, including being whipped with a thick wire commonly used for street electrical wiring. Soldiers deliberately humiliated him in front of other detainees, including fellow medical staff.

Transferred to Sde Teyman military camp
He was later taken to an undisclosed location before being transferred to the Sde Teyman military camp under Israeli army control.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has also received information from recently released detainees at the Sde Teyman military camp, confirming that Dr Abu Safiya was subjected to severe torture, leading to a significant deterioration in his health.

This occurred despite him already being wounded by Israeli air strikes on the hospital, where he worked tirelessly until the facility was stormed and set ablaze by Israeli forces.

The Israeli army has attempted to mislead the public regarding Dr Abu Safiya’s detention and torture.

Pro-Israeli media outlets circulated a misleading promotional video portraying his treatment as humane, even though he was tortured and humiliated immediately after filming.

Euro-Med Monitor warns of the severe implications of Israel’s denial of Dr Abu Safiya’s detention, describing this as a deeply troubling indicator of his fate and detention conditions. This denial also reflects a blatant disregard for binding legal standards.

Physicians for Human Rights — Israel (PHRI) submitted a request on behalf of Dr Abu Safiya’s family to obtain information and facilitate a lawyer’s visit on 2 January 2024. However, the Israeli authorities claimed to have no record of his detention, stating they had no indication of his arrest.

Deep concern over execution risk
Euro-Med Monitor expresses deep concern that Dr Abu Safiya may face execution during his detention, similar to the fate of Dr Adnan Al-Bursh, head of the orthopaedics department at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, who was killed under torture at Ofer Detention Centre on 19 April 2024.

Dr Al-Bursh had been detained along with colleagues from Al-Awda Hospital in December 2023.

Likewise, Dr Iyad Al-Rantisi, head of the obstetrics department at Kamal Adwan Hospital, was killed due to torture at an Israeli Shin Bet interrogation centre in Ashkelon, one week after his detention in November 2023. Israeli authorities concealed his death for more than seven months.

Dozens of doctors and medical staff remain subjected to arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance in Israeli prisons and detention centres, where they face severe torture and solitary confinement, according to testimonies from former detainees.

The detention of Dr Abu Safiya must be understood within the context of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, which has persisted for nearly 15 months. His arrest, torture, and potential execution form part of a broader strategy aimed at destroying the Palestinian people in Gaza — both physically and psychologically — and breaking their will.

This strategy includes not only the deliberate destruction of the health sector and the disruption of medical staff operations, particularly in northern Gaza, but also an attack on the symbolic and humanitarian role represented by Dr Abu Safiya.

Despite the grave crimes committed against Kamal Adwan Hospital, its staff, and patients, especially in the past two months, Dr Abu Safiya remained unwavering in his dedication to providing essential medical care and fulfilling his medical duties.

Call on states, UN to take immediate steps
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor calls on all concerned states, international entities, and UN bodies to take immediate and effective measures to secure the unconditional release of Dr Abu Safiya. His fundamental rights to life, physical safety, and dignity must be protected, shielding him from torture or any cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.

Euro-Med Monitor also urges international and local human rights organisations to be granted full access to visit Dr Abu Safiya, monitor his health condition, provide necessary medical treatment, and ensure he is free from human rights violations until his release.

Furthermore, Euro-Med Monitor reiterates its call for the United Nations to deploy an international investigative mission to examine the grave crimes and violations faced by Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons.

It calls for the immediate release of those detained arbitrarily, for international and local organisations to be granted visitation rights, and for detainees to have access to legal representation.

Euro-Med Monitor expresses regret over the continued inaction of Alice Jill Edwards, the Special Rapporteur on Torture, who has failed to address these atrocities. It condemns her bias and deliberate negligence in fulfilling her mandate and calls for her dismissal.

A new Special Rapporteur who is neutral and committed to universal human rights principles must be appointed.

Additionally, Euro-Med Monitor urges the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, and the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances to conduct immediate and thorough investigations into crimes committed by the Israeli military in Gaza.

Call for prosecution of Israeli crimes
It calls for direct engagement with victims and families, as well as for reports to be submitted to pave the way for investigative committees, fact-finding missions, and international courts to prosecute Israeli crimes, hold perpetrators accountable, and compensate victims in line with international law.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor renews its call for relevant states and entities to fulfil their legal obligations to halt the genocide in Gaza.

This includes imposing a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel, holding it accountable for its crimes, and taking effective measures to protect Palestinian civilians. Immediate steps must also be taken to prevent forced displacement, ensure the return of residents, release arbitrarily detained Palestinians, and facilitate the urgent entry of life-saving humanitarian aid into Gaza without obstacles.

Finally, Euro-Med Monitor demands the withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces from the entire Gaza Strip.

Republished from Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.

Israel is forcing two hospitals in northern Gaza to evacuate under threat of attack as its ethnic cleansing campaign continues.

Israeli forces have surrounded the Indonesian Hospital, where many staff and patients sought shelter after nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital was destroyed in an Israeli raid last week, reports Al Jazeera.

Late on Friday, a forced order to evacuate was also issued for the al-Awda Hospital, where 100 people are believed to be sheltering.

• READ MORE: ‘Suspend Israel ties’ plea to global medical professionals – Auckland hospital protest vigil over Gaza
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The evacuation order came as New Zealand Palestine solidarity protesters followed a silent vigil outside Auckland Hospital yesterday with a rally in downtown Auckland’s Te Komititanga Square today, where doctors and other professional health staff called for support for Gaza’s besieged health facilities and protection for medical workers.

When New Zealand youth health professional Michael Brenndorfer recalled the first time that the Israel military bombed and destroyed al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza in November 2023, the world was “ready to accept the the lies that Israel told then”.

“Of course, they wouldn’t bomb a hospital, who would bomb a hospital? That’s a horrible war crime, if must have been Hamas that bombed themselves.

“And the world let Israel get away with it. That’s the time that we knew if the world let Israel get away with it once, they would repeat it again and again and we would allow a dangerous precedent to be set where health care workers and health care centres would become targets over and over again.

“In the past year it is exactly what we have seen,” he said to cries of shame.

“We have seen not only the targeting of health care infrastructure, but the targeting of healthcare workers.

“The murdering of healthcare workers, of aid workers all across Gaza at the hands of Israel — openly without any word of opposition from our government, without a word of opposition from any global government about these war crimes and genocidal actions until today.”

Youth health professional Michael Brenndorfer speaking.

In an impassioned speech about the devastating price that Gazans were paying for the Israeli war, New Zealand Palestinian doctor and Gaza survivor Dr Abdallah Gouda vowed that his people would keep their dream for an independent state of Palestine and “we will never leave Gaza”.

Gaza survivor Dr Abdallah Gouda speaking.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called for an investigation into the Israeli attacks on Gaza hospitals and medical workers.

Volker Türk told the UN Security Council meeting on the Middle East that Israeli claims of Hamas launching attacks from hospitals in Gaza were often “vague” and sometimes “contradicted by publicly available information”.

Palestine urges UN to end Gaza genocide, ‘Israeli impunity’
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian envoy to the UN, said: “It is our collective responsibility to bring this hell to an end. It is our collective responsibility to bring this genocide to an end.”

Norway is the latest country to condemn the attacks on Gaza’s hospitals and medical workers.

On X, the country’s Foreign Ministry said that “urgent action” was needed to restore north Gaza’s hospitals, which were continuously subjected to Israeli attack.

Without naming Israel, the ministry said that “health workers, patients and hospitals are not lawful targets”.

Urgent action is needed to restore North Gaza’s hospitals and uphold international humanitarian law.

Protecting healthcare saves lives.
We share WHOs concern at #UNSC

Health workers, patients, and hospitals are not lawful targets. https://t.co/VWswcGhCex

— Norway MFA (@NorwayMFA) January 3, 2025

Israel ‘deprives 40,000’ of healthcare in northern Gaza
The Israeli military is systematically destroying hospitals in northern Gaza, the Gaza Government Media Office said.

In a statement, it said: “The Israeli occupation continues its heinous crimes and arbitrary aggression against hospitals and medical teams in northern Gaza, reflecting a dangerous and deliberate escalation.”

These acts, it added, were being carried out amid “unjustified silence of the international community and the UN Security Council”, violating international humanitarian law and human rights conventions.

The statement highlighted the destruction of Kamal Adwan Hospital, where its director, Dr Hussam Abu Safia, was arrested and reportedly subjected to physical and psychological abuse.

The GMO described these acts as “full-fledged war crimes”.

According to a recent report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Israeli military had conducted more than 136 air raids on at least 27 hospitals and 12 medical facilities across Gaza in the past eight months.

The GMO report demanded an independent international investigation into these violations and accountability for Israel in international courts.

Amnesty International criticises detention of Kamal Adwan doctor
Agnes Callamard, secretary-general of the human rights watchdog Amnesty International, said Israel’s detention of Dr Hussam Abu Safia underscored a pattern of “genocidal intent and genocidal acts” by Israel in Gaza.

“Dr Abu Safia’s unlawful detention is emblematic of the broader attacks on the healthcare sector in Gaza and Israel’s attempts to annihilate it,” Callamard said in a social media post.

“None of the medical staff abducted by Israeli forces since November 2023 from Gaza during raids on hospitals and clinics has been charged or put before a trial; those released after enduring unimaginable torture were never charged and did not stand trial.

“Those still detained remain held without charges or trial under inhumane conditions and at risk of torture,” she added.

Papua New Guinea’s Chuave District Development Authority is condemning an attack on a priest and his team in Chimbu province.

Father Ryszard Wajda (SVD), three nurses, two doctors from Mingende hospital, and two Catholic education officers returned on a four-day foot patrol to Kiari in Nomane sub-district when they were attacked at Dulai village by villagers from Nomane.

The few villagers who fixed a damaged section of the Nomane feeder road demanded K1000 (NZ$425) from Father Wajda and his team and attacked them after alleging that they had missed out on disaster money given by Prime Minister James Marape to the province.

• READ MORE: Other PNG crime reports

Father Wajda, who is the parish priest of Wangoi in Chuave district, said that his team gave K200 (NZ$85) but the Dulai villagers refused this.

“The villagers directed violent abusive language to me and more to my team members,” he said.

He said that one of the education officers was punched several times, and others were violently pulled out of my parish vehicle.

“I stayed in the car, and nobody touched me physically,” he said.

Teacher intervened
Father Wajda said that they were allowed to travel after a teacher from the area intervened and assured the villagers that he would pay K1000 when he received his fortnightly pay.

He said that he had helped the local teacher last Friday to pay K1000 demanded by the villagers.

“It took us one day to walk and cross Waghi to visit my new Catholic community in remote Kiari at their request and spend four days with them addressing different issues,” he said.

Father Wajda said the nurses and doctors treated 200 patients during the three days working from 8am-11am every morning. He said the two education officers inspected the education institution.

“It took us 12 hours to walk back to Dulai and another village a few kilometres further up when my parish vehicle waited and picked us up,” he said.

He said that that the attack was unfortunate and local community leaders were negotiated fr a peace reconciliation.

Chief executive officer Francis Aiwa of Chuave District Development Authority (CDDA) said the attack on Father Wajda’s group was “uncalled for”.

He said that the perpetrators must be arrested and put behind bars.

The Catholic Church played an important role in the lives of everyone and such attack and killing of a priest are uncalled for and must not be repeated, Aiwa said.

Republished from the Post-Courier with permission.

Three New Zealand doctors — two Palestinian and one Iraq-born — are planning to join the charity Kia Ora Gaza in its mission this month to provide humanitarian aid to the besieged enclave, reports 1News.

But reporter Simon Mercep says “they’re not completely sure whether they’ll reach the Gaza coast and step on dry land”.

Mercep asked Gaza-born Dr Wasfi Shahin how hopeful was he?

• READ MORE: International civilian aid flotilla to break the siege of Gaza
• Simon Mercep’s video report on 1News
• Other Kia Ora Gaza reports

“He paused before smiling as he told 1News tonight: ‘Fifty percent. Not more’.

But Mercep said he remained determined.

Dr Shain said: “I hope I can reach there to see what I left 50 years ago.”

1News asked Faiez Idais, a Jordan-trained doctor, how dangerous he expected the mission to be.

‘We’ll be in danger’
“If they [the people of Gaza] are in danger, we’ll be in danger. It’s not a problem for us,” he said.

“They don’t have even water to drink. They don’t have food to eat.”

“I am a physician,” he added. “I can’t do anything from here.”

Dr Idais was born in Jerusalem and has never been to the Gaza Strip.

The third doctor, Iraqi-born Dr Adnan Ali-Kenani, took a pragmatic approach, reports Mercep.

“If we get an opportunity, if we land there, we can do service on land,” he said. “It depends on the circumstances there. But we are purely a health organisation.”

The doctors will fly out of Auckland next week to join the Freedom Flotilla Coalition international humanitarian effort, which is assembling ships at the port of Istanbul in Turkiye.

A container vessel and one ship for volunteers is already there, and a third is expected to join soon.

Seven aid workers killed
Since the doctors were interviewed for the report last weekend, seven international charity workers were killed in a drone attack by Israeli forces in Gaza — six foreigners and a Palestinian.

This took the death toll of aid workers to at least 203 aid workers in Israel’s deadly six-month war on Gaza, according to the Aid Worker Security Database.

The killing has caused outrage around the world and the founder of the charity World Central Kitchen that employed the aid workers, Spanish American celebrity chef Jose Andres,  said they were “targeted systematically”.

This took the death toll of aid workers to 195 in Israel’s deadly six-month war on Gaza.

‘Catastrophic hunger’
Meanwhile, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition reports that it will be sailing in mid-April with several vessels carrying 5500 tons of humanitarian aid and hundreds of international human rights observers to challenge the ongoing illegal Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.

“This is an emergency mission as the situation in Gaza is dire, with famine setting in in northern Gaza, and catastrophic hunger present throughout the Gaza Strip as the result of a deliberate policy by the Israeli government to starve the Palestinian people,” the coalition said in a statement.

“Time is critical as experts predict that hunger and disease could claim more lives than have been killed in the bombing.

“Getting humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza is urgent, but it is not sufficient. We must end Israel’s unlawful, deadly blockade as well as Israel’s overall control of Gaza.”

The statement added that “allowing Israel to control what and how much humanitarian aid can get to Palestinians in Gaza is like letting the fox manage the henhouse.”

• More information on how to donate to Kia Ora Gaza

Asia Pacific Report with 1News and Freedom Flotilla Coalition reporting.

Next month, on July 10, six months will have passed since Papua’s Governor Lukas Enembe was “kidnapped” and flown to Jakarta for charges over alleged one million rupiah (NZ$100,000) graft.

Despite his deteriorating health, he has been detained in a Corruption Eradication Commission’s cell (KPK) in the Indonesian capital — more than 3700 km from his hometown of Jayapura.

He is due to appear in court today, but that depends on his health status.

• READ MORE: Yamin Kogoya: Arrest of Papuan governor Enembe condemned as illegal Jakarta ‘kidnap’
• Other Lukas Enembe reports

His drawn out ordeal has been full of drama and trauma. There has been indecisiveness around the case and the hearing date has been repeatedly rescheduled — from 20 more days, to 40 more days, and now into months.

There are no clear signs of any definite closure. For his family, friends, colleagues, and the Papuan people, this has been a nightmare.

While being held captive and tortured in the KPK’s prison cell in Jakarta, his kidney, stroke, and heart specialists in Singapore are concerned about what has been happening to their long-term patient.

In December 2020, Governor Enembe had a major stroke — for the fourth time. He lost his voice completely in Singapore, but his medical specialists at Mount Elizabeth hospital brought his voice back.

Since then, during a covid lockdown in 2021, he had another stroke, and was flown to Singapore.

Between 2020 and 2022 he had been receiving intensive medical assistance from Singapore. He was about to go to Singapore last September as part of his routine check-ups, only to discover that his bank account had been frozen, and his overseas travel blocked.

The trip in September was supposed to fix his already failing kidneys. He was unable to walk properly, his foot kept swelling and he began to lose his voice again.

He was on a strict diet as advised by his doctors in Singapore.

After Jakarta’s special security forces and KPK “abducted” him during a happy lunch hour at a local restaurant in his homeland on January 10, all his routine medical treatment in Singapore came to an abrupt halt.

Governor’s health
Following the abduction, medical specialists in Singapore expressed their concern in writing and requested that the medical report of his latest blood test from KPK Jakarta be released so that they could follow up on his critical health issues.

On 24 February 2023, the medical centre in Singapore wrote a medical request letter and addressed it directly to KPK in Jakarta.

“The above mentioned (Lukas Enembe) is a patient at Royal Healthcare Heart, Stroke and Cancer Centre under Patrick Ang (Senior Consultant Cardiologist) and Dr Francisco Salcido-Ochoa (Senior Renal Physician). He was last reviewed by us in October 2022. As his primary physicians, we are gravely concerned about his current medical status.

“We are aware that his renal condition has deteriorated over the last few months with suboptimal blood pressure control. We are humbly requesting a medical report on his renal parameters via biochemistry, blood pressure readings and a list of his current medications.”

To date, however, KPK has prevented his trusted long-time Singaporean medical specialists and family members from obtaining any reports regarding his health.

The governor’s family in Jakarta have repeatedly requested for an independent medical team to oversee his health, but KPK has refused.

Only KPK’s approved medical team is allowed to monitor his health and all the results of his blood tests, types of medications he has been offered and overall report on his treatment since the kidnapping has not been released to the governor, his family, medical specialists in Singapore or the Papuan people.

Elius Enembe, spokesperson of the governor’s family said they want the panel of judges at the Tipikor Jakarta court to appoint a team of independent doctors outside the Indonesian Doctors Association (IDI) to check the governor’s health condition.

According to the family, it was important to ensure Enembe’s current health conditions are verified independently before the court hearing takes place. This is because “we consider IDI to no longer be independent”, Lukas Enembe’s brother, Elius Enembe, told reporters in Jakarta, reports Medcom.

“After all,” he continued, “Indonesia’s Human Rights Commissioner had issued a recommendation that Lukas continue his treatment, rights that had been obtained before being arrested by the KPK, a service to be received from the Mount Elisabeth Singapore hospital doctor’s team.”

An independent opinion of the governor’s actual health condition is critical before the hearing so that judges have a clear, objective picture on his health condition.

“If there is an independent doctor, then there is another opinion that could be considered by the judge to ensure the governor’s health condition. This is what we are hoping for, so that the panel of judges can objectively make its decisions,” said Elius Enembe.

The court hearing
One of his five times failed case hearing attempts was supposed to be held in Central Jakarta’s District Court at 10am last Monday, 12 June 2023. This highly publicised and anticipated hearing did not take place.

Two conflicting narratives emerged about why this was adjourned.

KPK’s view
According to the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), Lukas Enembe’s actions hampered the legal process. In fact, the head of the KPK news section, Ali Fikri, stated that his first session was met with a very uncooperative attitude.

“We regret the attitude of the defendant, which we consider uncooperative,” Fikri said in his statement quoted by Holopis.com on June 12.

“The confession of Lukas Enembe, who was ill and could not attend the trial, was considered strange and far-fetched by the KPK. The defendant can answer the judge’s questions and explain his situation, even though he later claims that he is ill,” he said.

Fikri also threatened Lukas Enembe by saying that the Governor would face consequences during the prosecution process.

“The KPK Prosecutor Team and the panel of judges will assess his attitude separately when conducting prosecutions or drafting charges,” he said. ‘

“Of course, there are aggravating matters or mitigating issues, which will be a consideration when a defendant is uncooperative in the trial process,” he continued.

“When the trial process takes place, the KPK will always include a doctor’s health report to anticipate Luke’s uncooperative attitude in the retrial,” Fikri said. “The KPK Prosecutor Team will convey to the court in detail the defendant’s health condition during the next [hearing],” he said.

The first hearing in Lukas Enembe’s gratuity case has been postponed until this week. The reason for this is that Lukas Enembe claimed he was sick and could not participate in the virtual trial.

The Governor’s legal team protest
The Governor’s legal team protested against the KPK, saying that it was a “deliberate attempt” by the agency to manipulate public opinion based on biased and inaccurate information about what actually happened on Monday, June 12.

The following is the account provided by the Governor’s legal team after KPK was accused of spreading media news that the hearing had failed due to an “uncooperative governor” in terms of the legal proceedings on that day.

Monday, 12 June 2023, around 9.30am local Jakarta time, a guard entered the KPK’s detention room where Papua’s Governor, Lukas Enembe, was detained. The guard was requested to accompany the detained Governor to the hearing room.

Upon arriving at the door, the Governor asked the guard where the hearing was being held. The guard explained that he was taking him to the online courtroom in the red and white KPK building (red and white symbolise the colours of Indonesia’s flag or Bendera Merah Putih in Bahasa Indonesian).

The Governor said he would not attend the hearing via tele link. The Governor wanted to attend the hearing in person, not virtually via a screen.

Afterwards, the Governor went to his detainee room and wrote a letter of protest, explaining his aversion to viewing the proceedings on television. After the letter was written, the guard accompanied the Governor to the detention room to inform them of his desire to appear in court physically.

The court hearing was scheduled for 10am that day. Guards from KPK’s detention arrived at 9.30am to escort the Governor, allowing him only 30 minutes to prepare.

The Governor’s legal team was waiting outside the KPK’s building. As 10am approached, the legal team (Petrus, along with Cosmas Refra and Antonius Eko Nugroho), went to KPK’s receptionist and asked why they were not called to enter the hearing room.

The receptionist replied that they were still in the process of coordination since Enembe was not yet awake. Moments later, officers took the legal team into the detention visiting room, where there were masses of visitors because it was visiting time.

At one corner of the room, Governor Enembe was surrounded by prison guards working on a laptop. The governor’s lawyers were then told that the hearing would begin when the audio system was fixed.

When the Governor and the legal team finally met, the legal team asked Enembe why he was wearing shorts and a T-shirt to court. Governor Lukas said he was annoyed at the guard for suddenly arriving to escort him without warning, which is why he had not dressed neatly. He could not wear sandals because his feet were swollen.

Governor Enembe refused to have an online hearing because he had not been informed in advance of Monday’s hearing and the summons was only signed once the hearing was opened by the judges.

If the KPK prosecutor had notified him at least the day before the hearing, Governor Enembe would have cooperated. But he was only notified 30 minutes earlier.

As the judge covered the trial, the legal team led by Petrus, informed Governor Enembe to appear before the court on 19 June 2023. The governor nodded in agreement.

“In light of this explanation, we must emphasise that Mr Lukas does not intend to be uncooperative in facing the alleged case,” said the legal team.

According to Petrus, “the detained Governor Lukas Enembe did not immediately leave the detention room because he was still writing a statement that the prosecutor had not informed him in advance of the trial scheduled for Monday, 12 June 2023”.

The Governor’s next court hearing has been rescheduled for today and whether he can physically attend will depend on his health.

However, the main issue is will he be found guilty of the charges? There is a lot at stake.

Yamin Kogoya is a West Papuan academic/activist who has a Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development from the Australian National University and who contributes to Asia Pacific Report. From the Lani tribe in the Papuan Highlands, he is currently living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

• Other Yamin Kogoya articles

Te Whatu Ora’s new winter health plan fails to address workforce shortages and staff burnout in Aotearoa New Zealand, frontline healthcare workers say.

The organisation launched its 24-point plan on Wednesday, saying it would help hospitals and GPs cope with an expected surge in patient demand over the coming months.

Under the plan, people with minor ailments will be able to be assessed by a pharmacist and given free or subsidised medication in line with if they had visited their GP.

• READ MORE: Other NZ public health reports

Family doctors will also be able to refer patients for X-rays and ultrasounds in a bid to reduce hospital admissions.

Regional and national escalation plans will be in place to help improve hospital capacity by “diverting resources and patients within and across regions to support under-pressure facilities”.

But a doctor from Middlemore Hospital’s emergency department, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said while diverting patients and resources sounded “good in theory”, there needed to be the staff available to deliver that plan.

There was so much burnout among doctors and nurses, she said.

“You can’t flog a dead horse.

Staff ‘not available’
“In practice these escalation plans involve going through a checklist of different resources that can be provided to help, but you then find out they aren’t available — due to staffing issues.”

A nurse from the hospital’s ED agreed chronic workforce shortages would prevent many of the proposals ever working.

“It all sounds all great, but where is Te Whatu Ora finding all the staff to do these things and how are they going to do it in a healthcare system that is already understaffed and in crisis?”

Giving pharmacists a greater role to play could also be problematic as they were also busy and were not trained to diagnose patient ailments, the nurse said.

In February, Te Whatu Ora identified Middlemore Hospital as one of eight national ‘hotspots’ needing extra support before the winter flu season.

Former chairperson Rob Campbell admitted the workforce shortages plaguing Middlemore’s ED would not be addressed in time for the flu season.

It followed comments from frontline healthcare workers who said the hospital’s ED was haemorrhaging staff and they were concerned about its ability to function during winter.

‘Doing what we can’
In a statement, Te Whatu Ora (Counties Manukau) interim lead of hospital and specialist services Dr Vanessa Thornton said while there had been growth in staffing numbers nationally, it needed to continue to grow its workforce.

“We know that pressure from shortages across our workforce is being felt on the frontlines of our health system. We can’t fix those shortages quickly – but are doing what we can to alleviate pressure and get more staff into our hospitals and other services.”

She said that includes making it easier for internationally qualified staff to work here and assisting qualified nurses to return to practice.

Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air. It is published by Asia Pacific Report in collaboration.

A day before the first State of the Nation Address (SONA) of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr in Quezon City, a shooting incident inside the Ateneo de Manila University claimed the lives of at least three individuals, including the former mayor of Lamitan, Basilan, Rose Furigay.

Furigay was supposed to attend the graduation of her daughter, Hannah, when she was shot about 3.30 pm yesterday. Furigay suffered gunshot wounds in her head and chest.

Graduation rites of the Ateneo Law School were cancelled by the university.

• READ MORE: Human rights wishes for Marcos’ first SONA: Where will he stand?
• Other reports on President Marcos

Aside from Furigay, her long-time aide, Victor George Capistrano was also shot and died on the scene.

Ateneo security guard Jeneven Bandiala also died, Quezon City Police District (QCPD) director Brigadier-General Remus Medina said during his briefing on Sunday.

Hannah was also wounded in the incident and was immediately taken to the Quirino Memorial Medical Center. Medina said she was currently in stable condition.

Suspect Dr Chao Tiao Yumol was also wounded and suffered a gunshot wound. The police said they were still determining who shot the suspect.

The police recovered bullets and two guns — one with a silencer. Medina said Yumol used the gun with a silencer in killing the victims.

Yumol and his motive
Yumol, 38, is a general practitioner doctor and a native of Lamitan City. The police said the doctor had personal motives for killing Furigay.

“Initially, sa pagtatanong namin sa kanya, meron na silang long history ng away sa Lamitan, Basilan. So according to them, eh nagpapalitan na sila ng kaso. Itong si doktor naman ay laging nape-pressure sa pamilya ng Furigay. So lumalabas, personal ang away nila,” Medina said during his briefing.

(Initially, based on our interrogation of the suspect, they have a long history of conflict in Lamitan, Basilan. According to them, they filed cases against each other. The doctor was always pressured by the Furigay family. So it turned out that they had a personal conflict.)

Medina said Furigay filed 76 counts of cyber libel against Yumol, which temporarily prevented the suspect from practising medicine, according to the police. The suspect was detained for his libel cases, but was able to post bail, Medina added.

According to the QCPD director, Yumol also alleged that Furigay had a history of corruption:

“May ina-allege din si Doctor Yumol na katiwalian ng mayor. According to him, iyon po ang mga ina–allege niya, that is now subject for verification (Doctor Yumol is also alleging that the slain mayor was involved in corruption. According to him, that is what he is alleging, that is now subject for verification).”

The suspect was currently in the custody of the QCPD and undergoing custodial investigation.

No mention of human rights
Meanwhile, Rappler reports that was zero mention of human rights when Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr delivered his inaugural speech as president of the Philippines on June 30, and he went on to serve his first month in Malacañang without appointing anyone to the board vacancy of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR).

For his first State of the Nation Address (SONA) today, there is a mix of optimism and pessimism from the human rights community.

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of international group Human Rights Watch, urged Marcos to seize the “chance to distance himself from the rampant rights violations and deep-seated impunity of the Rodrigo Duterte administration”.

“President Marcos has a golden opportunity to get the Philippines on the right track by setting out clear priorities and policies to improve human rights in the country,” Robertson said in a statement.

The progressive Filipino lawyer Edre Olalia, president of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL), in a forum that the human rights prospects under Marcos “quite candidly [do] not look good.”

Jairo Bolledo is a Rappler reporter. Republished with permission.

An Aotearoa New Zealand health workforce recruiting agency is fielding calls from senior US doctors who say they can no longer live in their own country.

Accent Health Recruitment has been flooded with inquiries from US doctors wanting to come to New Zealand following the US Supreme Court’s decision overturning abortion rights last Friday.

The ruling has made access to abortions all but impossible in at least 18 states.

• READ MORE: Other reports about the US abortion court ruling

Accent Health Recruitment managing director Prudence Thomson said she normally got about 30 inquiries a day but that had doubled since the ruling.

“The emotion and frustration attached to their email, you could just feel it. They’re saying, ‘we can no longer live in this country, we need to come, will you have us in New Zealand?’

“It was quite an emotional tug, as far as of people really wanting to leave and throwing their hands in the air.”

Thomson said most inquiries were from GPs and obstetricians.

‘A spike in inquiries’
“There has been quite a spike in inquiries from them — they’re really passionate about looking after their patients and now they no longer are able to provide the healthcare they want,” she said.

“So they want to come to New Zealand to practise, which is good for New Zealand.”

Thomson said while it was sad these health workers felt forced morally to leave, it would help this country’s health worker “crisis”.

However, she said it would take at least six months before the American health professionals could work in New Zealand.

“Every medical professional needs to get their qualifications verified to come to New Zealand and that takes from three to six months.

“While we want to speed it up we don’t want to cut corners because in a crisis that’s when the weaknesses will be exposed and that’s when the people who want to commit identity fraud could get through.”

However, she said it should still give the chronically understaffed health sector some hope that help was coming.

Messaging about jobs
US nurse McKenzie Mills recently moved to New Zealand and said former colleagues had been messaging her about jobs ever since the US Supreme Court ruled against abortion.

She said she was heartbroken and angry after the ruling.

However, she said she was even more sure now that her decision to move to New Zealand in January was the right one.

“I take care of people and it just really broke my heart that there is so much health care that will be denied to millions of women.”

Mills said she felt like she had “escaped” her own country as a result of the ruling.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Wearing glasses or getting a runny nose is enough to qualify for a mask exemption under current New Zealand’s Ministry of Health criteria — and a doctor says its time for tougher rules.

Hearing aids, hayfever or a tendency to get dry eyes are also reasons to request the legally binding card that says you do not need to wear a mask when normally required to under covid-19 rules.

Some doctors say the reasons are far too loose, with people simply needing to tick just one of the symptoms on the ministry’s website list to get an exemption card sent to them.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘I want masks to be legitimate and used and trusted’ — Medicine specialist Dr Gary Payinda
• ‘It’s very clear that masks work and it’s very clear you can get sufficient fresh air through them’ – Covid-19 modeller Dr Dion O’Neale
• Facemask exemption criteria

Northland medicine specialist Dr Gary Payinda said the card was a great idea for people who had legitimate reasons for not wearing a mask.

But the current list of criteria was so wide it was absurd — almost everyone in the country would qualify, he said.

“If we’ve made it so easy that literally anyone can click a box and say I have a ‘condition’ … we really have to ask is it still a public health measure.”

With so many other measures relaxed, masks were one of the last lines of defence against the virus, and so everyone who could wear one, should be, he said.

Compromising public health measures
He told RNZ Morning Report that compromising one of the most effective public health measures was not doing the community a good service.

“We want the right people to be protected by this law and we want masks to still be a meaningful way of reducing the burden of covid in the community.”

“If we make an exemption process so easy to get that it’s meaningless, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot.

“I want masks to be legitimate and used and trusted, and that won’t be the case if anyone can literally tick the box and say, ‘face coverings give me a runny nose’ and that’s enough to get a mask exemption.”

The criteria have come under scrutiny as the government changes the process for getting a mask exemption card.

Until now, cards were issued by the Disabled Persons Assembly but the new ones are issued by the Ministry of Health and have legal standing.

They are intended for people to show to shops or other businesses so they do not have to explain potentially sensitive reasons why they may have an exemption.

The ministry said it had tried to make the process for applying for a card uncomplicated to avoid marginalising vulnerable communities.

Small minority misuses system
The vast majority of New Zealanders had shown they wanted to do the right thing to protect their communities and only a small minority had tried to misuse the system, it said.

A spokesperson indicated the criteria may be changed as the new card comes into effect but was not able to respond with more details before RNZ’s deadline.

Existing cards, issued with the current criteria, can still be used when the new ones come into effect.

The Disabled Persons Assembly welcomed the new card system, telling Midday Report the old system had been causing distress for some in the disabled community.

Prudence Walker said people had not been believed, refused service or had the police called on them.

She hoped the new card would improve things.

Dr Payinda said there were many good reasons — because of both physical and mental health — that people could not wear masks and he supported them doing that but the current list was open to abuse.

Current criteria wideranging
The current criteria for requesting a card according to the Ministry of Health website include having the following conditions if they make wearing a mask difficult: asthma; sensitive skin or a skin condition like eczema; wearing hearing aids; getting migraines, having glasses, dry eyes or contact lenses; hay fever; difficulty breathing; dizziness, headaches, nausea or tiredness; a runny nose from wearing a face covering; a physical or mental illness, condition or disability.

Needing to communicate with someone who is deaf or hard of hearing is also one of the criteria.

Covid-19 modeller Dr Dion O’Neale said attempting to force those who were adamantly opposed to masks to wear one wouldn’t be effective.

“If they want to be difficult about it they’ll manage to tick the box and say I’m wearing it, and wear it badly.”

Most people did want to protect themselves and those around them, so it was important to keep the messaging clear on how masks work and when to wear them, he told Morning Report.

“It’s physics. The mask, if it’s well fitted, it’s going to be filtering out small particles. If those particles are viruses you’re not going to be infected by them, or if you’re breathing in a much smaller number of those particles you’re going to have a much lower exposure dose, so your infection risk is much lower.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Yap State Governor Jesse Salalu has declared a state of emergency over a mass resignation of 40 doctors and nurses at Yap State Hospital after authorities declined to consider their grievances.

“Due to the sudden departure of staff, the Department of Health Services is now in need of finding and recruiting qualified nurses and doctors to fill vacancies, so as to minimise disruptions to its operations and services,” stated the emergency declaration.

“There is no sufficient pool of qualified nurses and doctors available on island for immediate recruitment to help prevent or minimise disruptions to the operation and services of the hospital,” Governor Salalu said in his emergency declaration on March 31.

• READ MORE: Public health in FSM
• Covid updates in other Pacific states

The emergency status authorises the Department of Health Services to work with Waab Community Health Center to allow the sharing and realignment of human resources to the main hospital.

DHS will also look into the possibility of rehiring local retired medical professionals on a temporary basis.

Led by Dr James Yaingeluo, the doctors and nurses handed in their resignations on March 29 after Salalu declined to hear their grievances.

When Salalu failed to appear at a meeting requested by the medical staff, a representative from the Office of the Attorney-General and a cabinet member refused to discuss the matter with them.

Severe understaffing
Among the grievances are persistently severe understaffing, low salaries resulting in the inability to attract and keep qualified professionals, working without contracts, and the Yap State Legislature’s refusal to release JEMCO-approved Office of Insular Affairs grant funds for wage increases.

Many of the unresolved issues that date back to 2019 have been exacerbated during the pandemic.

Yap is reported to have the lowest pay rates in FSM’s health care sector and has difficulty recruiting qualified doctors and nurses due to the higher compensation offered by other health care institutions in the region.

This is especially true since the onset of the covid-19 pandemic when health care professionals began receiving significantly higher offers from employers.

A year ago, then Governor Henry Falan submitted a supplemental budget request to the Yap State Legislature. Included in the request was $108,614 for doctors’ salaries. The money had been approved by JEMCO, granted by OIA and sourced from the Compact Health Sector.

Dr Mandela A. Bodunrin, the hospital’s then chief-of-staff who has since left, requested the grant to increase doctors’ salaries in order to fill open positions for doctors that were going unfilled.

DHS was unable to compete in the marketplace for the talent it required at the salary levels it was offering.

Further review needed
The legislature has the power to approve all OIA grants prior to their release, but the finance committee stated that further review was needed.

The doctors then on-staff signed temporary contracts at the pay level authorised in the prior budget year while they awaited the legislature’s approval of Falan’s supplemental budget request.

Their overtime and on-call remuneration tapped out the DHS’s FY2021 budget early due to the dearth of doctors.

The temporary contracts expired in February 2021. The money from the grant was “to ensure continuity of the compensation until September 30, 2021,” Falan said. The money would not come from the state’s general fund.

Understaffing and the inablity to attract qualified professionals became an even larger concern as the pandemic rapidly grew in importance within the medical community and compensation ballooned worldwide.

During one of the meetings of the state’s emergency task force addressing covid-19, it was revealed that a number of nurses stated that they would quit once the border was opened and the first case was identified, adding another layer of stress to an already overburdened organisation.

Yap’s border has been closed since April 2020. Repatriation of the state’s citizens who are stranded off-island has been in fits and starts, challenging the small medical team to manage quarantine and testing protocols while tending to the daily needs of the hospital’s patients.

Repatriation flight postponed
The most recent announcement for a repatriation flight arriving from Guam on Wednesday has been postponed.

A team from the FSM Department of Health was on Yap the week of March 27 assessing the state’s readiness to reopen its borders. Their report is being awaited but the lack of medical personnel will now undoubtedly influence that decision.

According to the Yap State Constitution, employees “have the right to form associations for the purpose of presenting their views to the government” and to be “free from restraint or reprisal in exercising this right.

The government shall give reasonable opportunity to representatives of such associations to present their views.”

However, it also states that “employees, whether or not exempted by the public service system, shall not strike or cause work stoppage for the purpose of collective bargaining or presenting their views.”

Further, “the regulations shall prescribe a system for hearing the views of employees on their working conditions, status, pay and related matters and for hearing and adjudicating grievances of any employee or group of employees.

“These regulations shall ensure that employees are free from coercion, discrimination, and reprisals and that they may have representatives of their choice.”

Dominic Taruwemai, the acting DHS director, has not accepted the doctors’ and nurses’ resignations as of this writing.

Joyce McClure is an American journalist who lived on Yap for five years and is now based in Guam. She is a contributor to the Pacific Island Times. This article is republished with permission.

As workers on the ground running ourselves into the ground, it’s quite disheartening to read all the reactionary criticism of MIQ, the managed isolation and quarantine system which has saved thousands of lives in New Zealand.

It’s easy not to appreciate what it has achieved, given it has prevented something awful from happening, and only see the restrictions and disadvantages it has necessarily caused by its existence.

Also, most of the people who have been spared from severe illness are not the ones who are complaining.

• READ MORE: Other reports on NZ’s response to covid-19
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I am so impressed with the small and dedicated MIQ teams I have worked with — a throw-together of excellent nurses, health care assistants, well-being coordinators, security, hotel staff, police and the impressive NZ Defence Force.

These people are gold and the cornerstone of preventing a certain healthcare system crisis.

They have retained great professionalism in the face of numerous extremely challenging guests and logistics around dealing with covid positive cases while keeping them as happy as can be in a confined space.

Currently we are full of overseas border returnees from all over the world, many angry at being in isolation and taking it out on our staff, to the point where absenteeism is common and job satisfaction has dipped hugely.

Staggering towards MIQ end
We are all staggering towards the end of the MIQ system, rather punch drunk and weary.

Our staff currently receive relentless angry calls from guests who don’t get what they want immediately, currently often the investigation of potential historical covid status (of which there are dozens presently), more than one expressing “there will be blood on the walls” if their immediate demands are not met.

I can understand why to a degree — they are stuck in a room and can’t see the huge amount of work going on behind the scenes, with teams putting in long tiring days, well over their paid hours, but unfortunately it also brings out the worst in some people of certain personality types and those with mental health issues.

Also I must add that a majority of people are able to “just get on with it” and do the time, something most of us would find tedious.

There is a financial cost to saving lives in any area of healthcare and now it has been deemed the harms of MIQ outweigh the benefits, rightly in my and most people’s opinion, as covid spreads in the community and borders open up.

If only we could have the same political will and public acceptance that we have had for lockdown and vaccination programme to put preventative health measures and laws to address the two other huge elephants in the room, our chronic disease epidemic and environmental crises.

Firm beneficial health laws
We could reduce our health spending by orders of magnitude while greatly improving health if we had some firm laws for clearly beneficial proposals such as sugar and fat taxes, and the marketing of harmful, processed foods and alcohol, especially at our children.

We could equally slash our carbon emissions whilst raising health outcomes with the promotion of a plant based type of diet, as per the current international public health consensus.

We just need to be brave, follow the science and not give in to the numerous interest group detractors. Our world beating covid response has shown we can do it.

Let’s keep the momentum up and not go back to our pre-covid slumber.

Dr Mark Craig is an Auckland-based lifestyle medicine doctor working in managed isolation and quarantine facilities. This article was first published in the New Zealand Herald and is republished here with the author’s permission.

A Papua New Guinean doctor, who is alleged to be covid-19 positive, has been arrested and charged in Solomon Islands for illegally crossing the border.

The doctor, from Bougainville and employed at Nonga Provincial Hospital in East New Britain province, was arrested and charged in the Solomon Islands capital, Honiara, for illegally crossing, authorities from both countries have said.

Solomon Island Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare made reference to the case in a statement he had made, saying the doctor was now being quarantined.

• READ MORE:  Solomons covid cases pass 300 and climbing
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Sogavare had, in his covid-19 update address to Solomon Islands on January 18, said: “…according to our contact tracing information, the index case that brought in the infection to Pelau is a medical doctor from Papua New Guinea who hails from Tasman Island and has traditional ties with the people of Pelau.

“This doctor with nine other people, including members of his family crossed the border illegally from Tasman to come to Paleu on 9th January 2022 and it is quite disturbing that such a highly qualified person a medical doctor, blatantly disregarded our laws, breached our covid-19 regulations, and crossed our border illegally.”

“He has now started a community transmission of covid-19 to his relatives and people in Pelau.

“It is extremely disappointing that the relatives of this doctor in Pelau completely disregarded the instructions from the government to not allow any person from the other side of the border to land at or stay in any of their villages and homes.

“By allowing the doctor to enter the village they have provided the platform to start the community transmission of covid-19 in Pelau.

In this regard the relatives of this doctor have also breached the covid-19 by allowing this doctor and his family to land and stay in Pelau and started the community transmission of covid-19.”

Confirmed by Bougainville
Autonomous Bougainville Government Health Secretary Dr Clement Totavun has confirmed that the doctor, from Tasman Island, works at Nonga Hospital, and travelled to Bougainville during Christmas, got on a ship to Tasman and then on to Pelau in Solomon Islands.

“I have been advised by my covid-19 team that this is true.

“The doctor from Tasman who works at Nonga General Hospital, Rabaul, came here during Christmas and got on the ship to Tasman and on to Pelau,” Dr Totavun said.

“He was arrested by Solomon Island police for crossing the border, which is currently closed, and is currently in Honiara. Doctors at Honiara Hospital have contacted our CEO Buka Hospital and confirmed.

“I have alerted our surveillance team to check out Tasman in the coming week as the virus might be spreading there,” Dr Totavun said.

Buka Hospital chief executive officer Dr Tommy Wotsia told the Post-Courier he was advised of the reports.

Traditional border crossing banned
Traditional border crossing between Bougainville and Solomon Islands has been banned since November last year following claims that Bougainvilleans had been smuggling arms into that country to arm and train Malaita islanders seeking to overthrow the Sogavare government.

Bougainville Police Commissioner Francis Tokura said he confirmed with Solomon Islands police about the incident but could not elaborate further.

Nonga Hospital chief executive officer Dr Ako Yap and his deputy Dr Patrick Kiromat also confirmed the doctor was working with them and had been on holiday since December.

They said they had not been officially notified of the incident involving the doctor in Honiara but said he was due to return to work soon.

Gorethy Kenneth is a senior journalist on the PNG Post-Courier. Republished with permission.

A New Zealand nurse has been referred to a professional conduct committee by the Nursing Council after posting threats online against medical professionals involved in the national covid-19 vaccine rollout.

Multiple agencies are investigating after the registered Dunedin nurse posted a video to social media “declaring war” against covid-19 vaccinators and calling medical professionals taking part in the vaccine rollout her “enemies”.

Under the pseudonym Lauren Hill, the nurse posted a message to an anti-vax group on social media app Telegram.

• READ MORE: Other NZ covid outbreak reports

In the video she said she was in a rage and called on the Prime Minister, the Covid-19 Response Minister and the Director-General of Health to “cease and desist” in the rollout of the vaccine to five to 11-year-olds.

RNZ can confirm the woman in the video is Dunedin nurse Lauren Bransgrove, who has been taking part in Voices for Freedom anti vax events in the southern city.

The Ministry of Health is aware of the matter and has said they were concerned.

Police, ACC and the Nursing Council are also aware of the post.

‘Resistance’ to monitor schools
In the message, Bransgrove called on fellow antivaxxers — referring to them as “the resistance” — to organise and prepare to monitor schools every day so they could attack vaccination buses when they turned up.

“We do everything we can to stand in the way of you injecting this poison into our children. We will rip the bribes from your hands, we will slash your tyres, and we will remove the poison from the truck. This is not inciting violence, this is inciting self-defence, especially for our youngest people,” she said during the two minute and 23 second long rant.

“So cease and desist now, because this is war. And to the doctors and nurses that are still allowing this to happen, that have seen what is happening in the hospitals and refuse to speak out, I do not consider you a colleague, I consider you an enemy.”

Medsafe is currently assessing an application to administer Pfizer’s covid-19 vaccine to children aged 5-11.

The vaccine would be one-third of the dose of that administered to those 12 and older, of which more than 7.8 million doses have been given in New Zealand.

The vaccine has been deemed safe and effective by the vast majority of experts, both in New Zealand and globally.

‘Long covid’ symptoms
While the risk of serious covid-19 infection is far lower among children, covid-19 has been one of the top 10 causes of death of children aged five-11 in the US over the past 12 months.

A large study of children in the UK aged 11-17 also found as many as one in seven might still show symptoms of the illness three months after infection, commonly known as “long covid”.

So far, millions of doses of the vaccine have been administered to children aged 5-11 in the US.

Medsafe says it has completed its initial assessment of the application and has received a response to its request for additional information from Pfizer.

It intends to make a decision regarding approval this month.

Bransgrove lists her occupation as a clinical advisor for ACC.

Before that she spent 15 years working as a nurse, including a role as a theatre nurse in a private hospital for seven years.

She completed her training through Otago Polytechnic.

Multiple agencies investigating
A Ministry of Health spokesperson confirmed multiple agencies were investigating the video and its contents.

“The Ministry of Health is very concerned about this and is looking into this as part of a multi-agency approach,” the spokesperson said.

Police also confirmed they were making inquiries into the matter.

The Nursing Council confirmed it had referred the matter to a professional conduct committee.

When a few thousand people marched onto Parliament grounds on November 9 with a mish-mash of gripes with government, Bransgrove took part in a similar but much smaller gathering in the Octagon in Dunedin.

Carrying a sign which read “Nurse of 20 years My Body/Choice”, she spoke to RNZ, but refused to provide her last name.

“I am a nurse who went to Otago Polytechnic, I spent many years in the operating theatre helping the people of New Zealand, I now work for a public agency which I will not name,” she told RNZ.

‘Many vaccine injuries’ claim
She went on to claim many vaccine injuries were being reported to ACC.

When asked how many vaccine injuries had been reported, she responded: “Well I don’t know exactly, but I know they’re being accepted”.

By November 27 ACC had received 1179 claims stemming from covid-19 vaccination treatment injuries.

Of those, 448 had been accepted and 260 declined with 471 yet to be decided.

Allergic reaction accounted for nearly half of the claims, with bruises and sprains the next most common injuries.

No deaths had been lodged with ACC.

To date Medsafe has said one death is likely linked to the covid-19 vaccine and has been referred to the coroner.

‘More going online’
When provided treatment injury numbers as these stood at the time, Bransgrove responded: “I don’t know the number but there’s a lot more going on online.”

“When you go on these groups online, because you can’t see any of this on the news because it is not reported, when you see real people with real injuries and real deaths, you’re going to have to start to wake up.

“This is not about health, this is about control, this is about totalitarianism,” she said.

She claimed she did not care if she lost her job as she believed she would look back on the time and find herself on the right side of history.

When asked why countries with high vaccination rates had low death rates from covid-19, she responded: “Tell me about Israel”.

At the time of the conversation, Israel’s daily case count was less than 10 percent of the peak of the delta outbreak (when 10,000 new cases were reported a day).

That decline in case numbers followed a successful and widespread booster programme in the country.

Israel now has a seven-day average of about 600 cases a day, while the average of daily deaths has been less than 10 since late October and now sits at about two deaths per day.

Many others ‘concerned’
Bransgrove told RNZ there were many others similarly concerned by the vaccine and terrified to speak out.

ACC moved this evening to distance itself from Bransgrove.

“We are urgently investigating this matter,” ACC chief executive Megan Main said in a statement.

“ACC in no way condones threats of violence under any circumstances.

“We have encouraged all of our staff to get vaccinated as the best measure to protect themselves and others against Covid-19. We have instituted a policy requiring all our staff to be vaccinated in order to be on any ACC site from 15 December.

“The opinions expressed in no way represent the views of ACC.”

Anti-vaccine posts removed
Bransgrove earlier told RNZ she worked from home five days a week and so would not be subject to the vaccination policy.

ACC would not comment on whether Bransgrove had been suspended.

Earlier today she removed anti-vaccine posts — including a threat against the Deputy Prime Minister — from her social media accounts.

Anti-vaccine group New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out with Science claimed it had the support of 105 doctors.

In contrast an open letter from doctors supporting covid-19 vaccination had more than 6500 signatures.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

As New Zealand readies for more covid-19 cases, warnings about the ability of public hospitals to cope are escalating.

There are 289 intensive care unit (ICU) or high dependency unit (HDU) beds at the moment, with Minister of Health Andrew Little insisting that could be ramped up to 550 if needed.

But that has been roundly questioned by opposition MPs, clinicians and ICU experts, including a recent New Zealand Medical Journal article concluding fully staffed, extra capacity would be more like 67 beds.

It describes New Zealand’s “comparatively low ICU capacity” as a “potential point of vulnerability” in the covid-19 response.

Intensive care
There is a reason it is called intensive care.

Patients there are so sick, each one has a nurse with them around the clock.

Those there because of covid-19 are usually struggling to breathe, their lungs unable to give their body all the oxygen it needs to function.

There are doctors, physios, pharmacists who come and go to give vital care but it is the nurses who are the constant.

That’s why the shortage of ICU nurses is at the heart of the debate.

New Zealand’s intensive care was already in a perilous position long before covid-19, with one of the lowest number of beds per capita in the developed world.

Doctors and nurses have been asking for help for 10 years, failing to make meaningful traction with successive governments.

The small community pulled together, pooled resources, when crises like the White Island eruption and the mass shooting in Christchurch hit.

But covid-19 is different. It is here for longer and will hit everywhere.

Political football
Little is “assured that we will manage and we will cope”.

High vaccination rates will mean fewer people will actually end up in hospital and “the vast majority who then get infected will be able to be cared for in the home with appropriate sort of monitoring, the stuff we’re putting in place at the moment”, he says.

He acknowledges any move to surge up would mean deferred operations for things like hip and knee replacements, and people needing a lower level of care getting it somewhere other than a hospital.

“The impact will be on non-covid patients who can be safely referred to other places for their care and recovery at the hospital.”

National Party MP Shane Reti says there are simply not enough specialist ICU nurses.

“Five point three nurses [needed per ICU] bed, it’s orphaned out and what we know from specialists … is that instead of the hundreds of beds that Andrew says we’ve got we’ve probably only got about 67 to surge to.”

Not wanting to sound like a “political caricature”, Little, however, lays the blame at the feet of the previous National government.

Heath underfunded
“Our ICU capacity – if we’re talking about just designated ICU wards, and ICU beds, yep, that’s been a long standing problem … the reality is health has been underfunded for a long time, particularly when it comes to health facilities and buildings,” he says.

He is confident any outbreak can be managed, saying expanding to 500 or so beds would require an increase to about 200,000 covid-19 patients across the country.

However, Reti says that the May 5 public sector pay freeze has impacted on staffing, with some going to Australia, and that New Zealand’s now competing with the world for ICU nurses with an immigration system that’s not friendly to them.

Nursing shortage
Even with the known nursing vacancies, New Zealand’s needs could be met with the training of about 1400 more nurses to work in ICU under supervision, Little says.

Through May 2020 till mid August this year, there were no new, resourced ICU beds in Auckland DHB, but the ICU nurse headcount dropped from about 250 to just over 212.

Reti says the nursing shortage is a major obstacle.

“When Minister Little says, ‘I’ve trained up 1400 ICU nurses’ — no you haven’t, what you’ve done is you’ve given them half a day’s online training and half a day on a mannequin.

“In no shape or form is that an ICU nurse — they’ll be valuable, don’t get me wrong — but valuable for turning patients in ICU?”

Auckland has the biggest ICU unit in the country, and needed to find nurses from across New Zealand on September 1 when eight active cases arrived there, he says, showing just how thin the margins are.

On the ground
Vice-president of the Australasian College of Intensive Care Rob Bevan says right now intensive care is coping well.

That is due, in large part, to high — and rising — vaccination rates and the fact that Auckland’s been in lockdown.

Quieter lives mean fewer car accident and workplace falls, while hospitals have delayed many of the planned operations which might involve ICU recovery.

But Dr Bevan, a specialist at Auckland’s Middlemore Hospital, says more beds will be needed next year when covid-19 is in the community and life was comparatively back to normal.

“There is going to be a burden of covid that people will need hospitalisation and intensive care for that we need to add onto what we were doing before,” he says.

“And acknowledging that our intensive care bed capacity before was still not enough to care for everybody without resorting to the deferment of planned care on occasion.”

Many who work in intensive care say the government and health bosses are wrong to count physical beds (and the equipment that comes with them) when there are not enough nurses to use them all.

Shocked by ‘training’
When they said they were training other nurses to help in ICU, the nurses organisation kaiwhakahaere Kerri Nuku said she was shocked to learn what that meant.

“Four hours online training — to go and support in ICU. Those decisions about what’s in the best interests of nursing have not been made for nurses,” she said.

Indeed, specialist ICU nurses say they would have to spend time supervising the online trained back-ups, adding more work to an already very challenging job.

And Bevan says surging up to more than 500 beds is not a realistic picture.

“That is a crisis, short term, and largely unsustainable model that we would have had to have moved to had we been overwhelmed like they have been in other parts of the world,” he says.

“But that would most likely achieve worse outcomes for all patients in ICU than they have in other parts of the world compared with our best model of care that we’ve been able to provide to date.”

The message is starting to get through to those who made decisions, he says.

Intensive care meetings
Intensive care bodies are meeting with the Ministry of Health twice a week and there is work underway to try to recruit more nurses from overseas, he says.

But it has to go beyond talk and into action, first to sort the short term problem but then to keep building on that over the next several years.

“The next pandemic is inevitable … it might be in 10 years, it might be in 100 years, but it is coming,” Bevan says.

Little says he has also asked for decisions on three DHBs proposals expanding ICU capacity to be “accelerated”, but even then, those “will be some months away — they won’t be instant”.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

A group of doctors have hit the phones to support Pasifika families who have tested positive for covid-19 and been transferred into managed isolation.

The chairperson of the Royal New Zealand College of GPs’ Pasifika chapter, Monica Liva, said about half the people infected with the virus in Auckland were Pasifika.

She contacted Pasifika doctors who could talk to people in their first language and hear any concerns they might have.

• READ MORE: Other NZ covid lockdown reports

“It’s also to take off the load off the MIQ medical team, so that they can focus on the urgent covid-19 needs,” Dr Liva said.

Dr Liva said she had been heartened by the number of GPs agreeing to help.

TikTok take-up for vaccines
The North Island iwi Ngāti Porou have launched a covid-19 vaccination campaign aimed at rangatahi using the social media platform TikTok.

The video challenge calls on young people to encourage their whānau to get vaccinated.

Ngāti Porou’s Taryne Papuni said TikTok was a natural first pick to get the message across.

“That’s one of the mediums that they’re always on, always on the TikTok or the Instagram.

“We thought yeah, we can reach a lot of our people, a lot of our young ones that way and hope that the young ones will actually lead for their elders.”

Earlier this week, Ngāti Porou hosted a vaccinations clinic at Te Poho o Rawiri Marae.

There have also been multiple events on this weekend targeting Pasifika vaccination rates.

18 new community cases in NZ
The Health Ministry reported 18 new community cases of covid-19 in New Zealand today, with all but two epidemiologically linked to previous cases.

There was no media conference today. In a statement, the ministry said there were now a total of 1165 community cases associated with the latest outbreak of the delta variant of the virus.

It said 934 of Auckland’s 1148 cases had now recovered.

The ministry said there were five cases in the past fortnight that were still not linked to previous cases.

The 16 linked cases reported today are all in isolation at home or in MIQ.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

A Papua New Guinean doctor evacuated from Daru in Western Province to Port Moresby last Tuesday has died – the latest medical person to succumb to the covid-19 pandemic in the country, reports The National.

The doctor was flown to Port Moresby after she suffered severe distress, according to Deputy Controller of the National Pandemic Response Dr Esorom Daoni .

“Daru Hospital has lost three people to the covid-19 in less than two weeks,” he said.

• READ MORE: Other PNG covid crisis reports

“These are people who are still in their prime age, but that is what the covid-19 does.”

There are 18,808 confirmed cases of covid-19 in Papua New Guinea with health workers making up 9 percent, or 1705.

A number of them have died.

He said there was a possibility it could be the delta variant which was spreading in Western Province.

“Unless it is proven otherwise, we can say that (her death) is due to the delta variant because the virus spreads fast and is deadlier for those with comorbidities and the elderly,” he said.

Dr Daoni reminded people around the country to follow public health safety rules: washing of hands, covering of mouth when coughing, avoiding crowded places, and physical distancing by 1.5 metres in public places such as markets and shops.

“When you protect yourself from diseases like covid-19 by following the health measures, you are not only looking after yourself and your loved ones but also protecting people who would look after you – the health workers,” Dr Daoni said.

Daru Hospital chief executive officer Dr Niko Wuatai said the hospital was preparing wards in case of a large number of admissions.

He said Daru was experiencing a third wave of the pandemic. As of Tuesday, the hospital had reported 89 positive cases in two weeks.

Republished with permission.

Arrested medical practitioner Dr Jone Hawea has claimed that Fiji police officers acted irresponsibly by not following to covid-19 safety protocols and exposed him to transmission of the disease, reports The Fiji Times.

Fiji Human Rights Anti-Discrimination Commission director Ashwin Raj reported this after a commission team visited Dr Hawea at Totogo Police Station in Suva on Thursday, following his arrest in Lautoka on Tuesday.

He has since been released.

• READ MORE: NFP leader accuses Fiji government of creating ‘police state’ after arrest

Dr Hawea was being questioned and investigated for allegedly sharing misinformation regarding covid-19.

Raj said Dr Hawea was in sound health, but had expressed concerns about his safety and his right to health.

“He [Dr Hawea] has questioned the rationale behind his transfer from Lautoka Police Station to Totogo when the Suva-Nausori corridor, as he described to the commission, is a “hot spot” for covid positive cases,” Raj said.

‘Risk of transmission’
“He stated that some police officers acted irresponsibly by not adhering to the covid-19 safety protocols and exposing him to risk of transmission.”

Raj also confirmed Dr Hawea had access to legal counsel. Questions sent to police spokeswoman Ana Naisoro remained unanswered.

Fijivillage News reports that Dr Hawea had been released from police custody on Thursday night.

The news website reported that the police stated that ordinary Fijians got arrested during curfew hours and Dr Hawea was no exception.

Republished with permission.

Fiji police have confirmed the arrest of former surgeon Dr Jone Hawea, a critic of the country’s covid pandemic response, from his Lautoka home during curfew hours.

Police spokesperson Ana Naisoro said Dr Hawea was taken in for police interrogation on allegations of allegedly sharing misinformation about covid-19.

“We confirm the arrest of Dr Hawea by our officers last [Tuesday] night,” Naisoro said.

• READ MORE: Other Fiji covid crisis reports

“He is currently being questioned at the CID Headquarters in Suva.”

Dr Hawea was arrested in Lautoka and transported to Suva by police officers.

His lawyer, Aman Ravindra-Singh, condemned the arrest, saying he could not access his client because the arrest had been conducted during curfew hours.

Ravindra-Singh said he had been informed by his client at 3am yesterday morning that police had taken him straight to Suva.

‘Whisked out of homes’
“It is a serious concern that people get to be arrested in the middle of the night, to be whisked out of their homes amid these covid restrictions,” he said.

“What has happened to safety protocols?

“I am representing Mr Hawea and I have not been able to access him because all of these took place during curfew hours.

“He has been denied justice and his human rights.”

Police spokesperson Ana Naisoro had not yet commented on the concerns raised by Ravindra-Singh.

Several senior political figures and human rights advocates were detained by police last month for criticising the government’s strategy to address the pandemic and their rejection of the controversial iTaukei Land Act.

Fiji now has 18,916 active cases in isolation and the death toll is at 453, with 451 of them from the April outbreak.

Luke Rawalai is a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.

A video by a Fiji doctor on adverse side effects of the AstraZeneca vaccine has been misconstrued to support conspiracy theories and myths not supported by any scientific evidence, says Fiji College of General Practitioners president Dr Ram Raju.

He said the college “does not condone any member spreading false information to the public”.

He was commenting critically about the video made by Lautoka-based Dr Baladina Kavoa.

• READ MORE: Fiji reports record 522 new cases of covid-19 – three more deaths
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• Other reports on the Fiji covid crisis

“It is a time for all of our healthcare workers to unite and educate the public about the truth and dispel all fears,”Dr Raju said.

“Doctors are seen to be community leaders who should therefore exercise extreme care and restraint in posting any news on social media.

“The Fiji College of GP’s is fully behind the vaccination programme rolled out by the Ministry of Health and Medical Services and we support their efforts.”

He said they had held many seminars on this subject well before the first covid-19 case was identified in March last year and all the doubts were dispelled.

Vaccinations ‘can save lives’
“At the moment, the covid-19 vaccination is the only method which can save lives,” Dr Raju said.

“It’s just like giving vaccination for a host of other diseases to save lives, like measles, diphtheria, tetanus, pneumonia, hepatitis, etc.”

He said there were some vaccination side effects that were to be expected.

“Getting covid-19 is not a joke and these conspiracy theories need to be laid to rest.

“By vaccinating, you are protecting yourself, your family and the population of Fiji.”

• The Fiji Times did not publish any comment by Dr Kavoa.

Repeka Nasiko is a Fiji Times journalist. Republished with permission.

Jakarta Indonesian Doctor’s Association (IDI) chairperson Slamet Budiarto has challenged a statement by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo who has claimed that the Indonesian government has succeeded in bringing the coronavirus pandemic under control.

Budiarto said he was confused about what parameters Widodo was using in making such a statement.

“I don’t understand why Pak [Mr] Jokowi made such a statement. Perhaps in terms of the economy, I don’t know what the economy is like. What I do know is in terms of health,” Budiarto told Kompas.com.

• READ MORE: Indonesia condemns ‘vaccine nationalism’

Budiarto asserted that in terms of health, the pandemic was clearly “out of control”. This could be seen from the first parameter – the high death rate.

According to the Johns Hopkins University world covid-19 map, Indonesia’s total number of deaths today is 30,277.

“Our death rate is the highest – number 1 among Asean countries – both in terms of percentage and number. I expect that by the end of the year there will be 100,000 deaths, by December 2021,” said Budiarto.

The second parameter used by the IDI, meanwhile, is the rate of new daily infections. On the day of the interview, there were an additional 13,094 new cases.

More than 1 million cases
Today the accumulative number of covid-19 cases in Indonesia is 1,089,308.

The deputy chairperson of the IDI confessed that he did not understand the parameters being used by Jokowi when he said the pandemic was under control.

“Yes, well perhaps the President has another parameter. For us at the IDI the parameters are the death and infection rate,” said Budiarto.

Regardless of the parameters being used, Budiarto is asking the government to focus on dealing with the pandemic in terms of health so the death rate can be brought down.

He said he had already proposed to Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin that covid-19 patients with minor symptoms be treated at home under the care of general practitioners.

“One doctor can monitor 10 people. Later they could be given incentives,” said Budiarto.

In this way, hospitals will not be full and treatment rooms in hospitals can be used to focus on patients with medium and serious symptoms.

‘Death rate rising’
“Right now the death rate is rising because hospitals are overloaded”, he said.

President Widodo said recently that in 2020 and entering 2021 Indonesia had faced a number of difficult challenges. One of these was the covid-19 pandemic which had resulted in a health and economic crisis.

Widodo, however, also claimed that Indonesia has been able to control both crises well.

“We are grateful. Indonesia is among the countries that is controlling these two [health and economic] crises well,” said Widodo during a full working assembly session of the Indonesian Communion of Churches (PGI) through the PGI Yakoma YouTube channel last week.

Translated by James Balowski for IndoLeft News. The original title of the article was “Jokowi Klaim Pandemi Terkendali, IDI Bingung Apa Indikatornya”.

Young Papua New Guinean mother-of-two Jenelyn Kennedy died from “head injury and bruised internal organs”, according to a doctor who examined her body.

Dr Seth Fose, the chief pathologist at the Port Moresby General Hospital, said the 19-year-old died from “blunt force trauma to the head and the body with a blunt instrument or object”.

Her body was left at the hospital by three men on Tuesday after she had undergone – alleged the babysitter who lived with her and her partner at a home at Korobosea – beatings for six days in a row.

READ MORE: Gender-based violence in PNG background and reports

Port Moresby police have charged her partner Bhosip Kaiwi with wilful murder. He has been in custody at the Boroko police station since last week and he appeared in the Waigani District Court today.

Jenelyn Kennedy’s body was left at the hospital on Tuesday by three men who arrived in a vehicle.

Grandfather Kennedy Karava said Jenelyn, who turned 19 on March 18, had been through five years of torture which they had been reporting to police.

In 2015, when she was in grade seven at the Eki Vaki Primary School, Karava said Jenelyn ran away with Kaiwi. They reported the matter to police as she was underage. They had two children.

Two doctors summoned
Babysitter Racheal Ipang told of how Jenelyn had been beaten up for six straight days up to last Monday night when two doctors were summoned to treat her at home.

Ipang said after the doctors had left, she had heard Jenelyn being beaten again.

“Her screams stopped at around 3am [Tuesday]. I believe that was when she passed away.”

The postmortem report, however, stated that she had died about 2pm on Tuesday.

Ipang said another woman was brought into the house to be the “second wife”, but she ran away after being subjected to beatings too.

Kennedy family spokesman Thomas Opa said the family would not accept any form of compensation from whoever caused Jenelyn’s death. They would leave it up to the court to decide on the appropriate punishment.

Meanwhile, the National Doctors Association is investigating the involvement of two doctors who were called to the home at Korobosea to treat Jenelyn.

Association secretary Dr Sam Yockopua said: “They could be nurses or other cadres of health workers”.

“We are investigating that,” he said.

“And if found guilty, we can revoke membership and refer them to the Medical Board for further action.”

Remand warrant for Kaiwi
PNG Post-Courier reports that Bhosip Kaiwi, the prime suspect in the killing of Jenelyn Kennedy, has appeared briefly before the Waigani District Court today facing a willful murder charge.

About 100 people gathered outside the courthouse this morning to catch a glimpse of the man who had shocked the nation with his alleged crimes.

Magistrate Tracey Ganai, after reading the charges, issued a remand warrant for Kaiwi to be moved from his Boroko police station cell to Bomana jail until his second court appearance due on July 30.

Kaiwi allegedly tortured and killed Kennedy, the mother of his two children, at his house in Korobosea, a northeast suburb of the capital Port Moresby.

Rebecca Kuku is a senior journalist with The National newspaper.

A New Zealand doctors’ union fears the Waitematā District Health Board is covering up mistakes that led to seven of its staff contracting covid-19 coronavirus.

Staff from Waitākere Hospital tested positive for the coronavirus after patients from St Margaret’s Hospital and Rest Home in Auckland were moved there.

The Resident Doctors Association said the the District Health Board (DHB) had failed to answer questions about the outbreak and workers at the hospital were increasingly nervous.

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The seven people who contracted covid-19 at Waitākere Hospital were all nurses, but Dr Deborah Powell from the Resident Doctors Association said it could have been anyone.

“It could’ve been a cleaner, it could’ve been a resident doctor, it could’ve been a laboratory phlebotomist.”

It was not yet clear how the nurses caught the disease.

Health officials are investigating whether they were infected through environmental contamination, after the DHB ordered an urgent review into the outbreak this month.

Unions want answers
Dr Powell said the unions representing hospital workers wanted answers now, and their repeated questions to the DHB had fallen on deaf ears.

“The unions have said to the District Health Board ‘we’re not interested in blame here, we’re interested in what went wrong so we can learn from it, that’s what we do in health’. We don’t get better unless we understand where we’ve made mistakes or we could’ve done things better.”

Unions wanted to know why the nurses and doctors treating patients infected with covid-19 were able to move between wards and why their personal protection equipment appeared to have failed, Dr Powell said.

Dr Powell also wanted to know why the St Margaret’s patients were taken to Waitākere Hospital in the first place.

“When we went into lockdown, vulnerable workers in health were moved away from the frontline, they were moved away from potential covid cases and quite a few of our North Shore people were put at Waitākere, the vulnerable people, because it was meant to be kept away from covid. The covid ward is at North Shore hospital.”

Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said the patients were moved to Waitākere Hospital because of the level of care they required, and because “it was also closer to their whanau in their community”.

Waitematā DHB declined RNZ’s request for an interview. RNZ also contacted some of the elected members of the DHB, but all declined to comment.

Review details
The urgent review’s terms of reference obtained by RNZ revealed a little more detail.

It showed the panel was reviewing Waitākere Hospital’s infection, prevention and control measures, as well as the use of PPE, training, rostering and the management of patients.

However, it is not investigating how the staff contracted covid-19 – this was being done by Auckland Regional Public Health.

Dr Bloomfield said he expected to be given a copy of the review today.

“The important thing here is we learn from each of the instances we have had so that we can then update our approach and policies nationally, which is what we’re intending to do here,” Dr Bloomfield said.

Dr Powell said the review process had lacked transparency.

“There’s a feeling of cover up here, which is utterly unnecessary and unhelpful, so I think that’s making people more nervous.”

The Waitematā District Health Board has indicated the review will be made public at the end of this week.

No new coronavirus cases
The Ministry of Health reported no new cases of covid-19 today as the country prepared go relax lockdown rules to alert level 2 on Thursday.

The number of confirmed and probable cases remains at 1497, with 1147 confirmed.

Two people are in hospital – one in Middlemore Hospital and one in North Shore Hospital – but there are no patients in ICU and there have been no further deaths.

Dr Bloomfield said 12 more people have recovered – 93 percent have recovered overall.

Renz Paas is an avid consumer of medical literature. Following news of an outbreak of a novel coronavirus from China early this year, the 27-year-old Filipino doctor kept himself abreast of emerging research on the disease now known in the world as Covid-19.

So when Dr Paas started having dry coughs on Monday, March 23, then shortness of breath and the loss of the senses of taste (dysgeusia) and smell (anosmia), he knew he was having the symptoms described by infectious diseases specialists.

Then fever set in. After informing his superiors in the internal medicine department of a major Quezon City hospital, where he was working as a resident physician, Dr Paas went on home quarantine.

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“I observed the symptoms but the cough was getting worse and the fever was continuous,” Dr Paas told PressOne.PH in an online interview.

“Friday, I went to the hospital. We did the tests and they were compatible with Covid-19 features. My chest X-ray showed pneumonia. So, I was admitted,” he recalled.

As a healthcare frontliner, Dr Paas was outraged upon learning from the news that some asymptomatic politicians got tested for the virus ahead of many others and in the comfort of their homes.

“I had to wait until the evening for my swab, because they ran out of swab kits,” he says.

Week for test result
It took a week for results of the polymerase chain reaction test to come back from the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine. He was positive.

“So far the epidemiologic data about Covid-19 published in NEJM (New England Journal of Medicine), The Lancet, and so on were all true. The anosmia and dysgeusia were initial symptoms. And you can get pneumonia even you’re in the 20s!” Dr Paas told his friends on Facebook on April 4, the day he was discharged.

Dr Paas suspects he was exposed to an infected patient in the course of work, an example of the risks medical professionals take especially during a pandemic. As an “internist”, his patients include those with diabetes and other chronic illnesses, “co-morbidities” that make them more vulnerable to Covid-19.

He is also proof that young, healthy people can catch the virus.

Two new legal codes – civil and criminal – have been introduced in Nepal, threatening the medical profession and media industry, and dividing the country over the consequences.

Global and local media freedom groups have condemned the penal code because of limitations imposed on the freedom to provide news and information in the public interest.

Doctors went on strike over the new penal code earlier this month in protest against the criminalising of medical negligence and lodged a petition with more than 6000 signatures to the Nepal Medical Council.

READ MORE: Free press on edge as Nepal’s new laws take effect

The government has agreed to address the issue and opened negotiations with the Nepal Medical Association.

The Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has protested to the Nepalese authorities about the implications for news organisations, saying the new law constitutes an “unacceptable censorship tool”.

Journalists in Nepal could face up to three years in prison if they publish information deemed to be “confidential” under the new criminal code, says RSF.

Protection of privacy provisions also pose a “serious threat” to journalism.

Showing ‘disrespect’
“Sections 293, 294 and 295 criminalise publishing private information, recording conversations or taking pictures without permission,” says RSF in its review of the law.

“Under article 306.2, showing ‘disrespect’ towards someone either directly or through satire is also punishable by up to three years in prison.”

Critics of the new laws – replacing the general code, nationally known as Muluki Ain – say there was no consultation on the draft provisions before they were enacted.

Two people given the responsibility to draft the two laws were Khil Raj Regmi, a former de facto Prime Minister of Nepal and former Chief Justice Khel Kalyan Shrestha. Neither of them had discussed the the laws with relevant stakeholders before adopting them.

The two codes were implemented on August 17, replacing a 55-year-old law, which was created during the previous Panchyaat Kall self-government political system in the early 1960s.

The two new codes were passed without any formal discussion with stakeholders – journalists, lawyers and medical doctors, this has led to protests from doctors and journalists.

Doctors protest
“Halting medical services, hundreds of doctors — both government and private — participated in a protest march … The protesting doctors, who were joined by retired doctors as well, wore aprons and stethoscopes,” reports The Himalayan Times.

Reporting on the September 2 rally, The Times quoted senior orthopaedic surgeon Dr Govinda KC as saying the new law would directly affect patients rather than doctors.

“Instead of proposing tougher penalties, it will be more prudent to thoroughly investigate negligence on the part of doctors during treatment,” he was quoted as saying.

After the strike, the government agreed to start talks with the Nepal Medical Association.

But there has been some negative feedback from the public arguing that the government should not have come under pressure to change the penal code as it was undermining government credibility.

The government has also taken steps to communicate with the Federation of Nepali Journalists (FNJ) and has decided to amend certain legal provisions in the laws to protect the freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

The government had failed to discuss the laws before passing them through Parliament, says Radheshyam Adhikari a Senior Advocate at the Supreme Court of Nepal.

Stakeholders unconvinced
Also, after passing the codes, the government had failed to convince stakeholders about the new laws.

“In reality [the] penal code has not affected the civil code, although – due to the current government misusing the law by suing people under cyber law – there has been widespread panic within Nepal’s doctor community and the FNJ as well,” says Adhikari.

“Furthermore, the law regarding the press is different and this is a civil law, if we were to choose between the press law and civil law, we will have to choose the press law.

“Press law is the same old law, which clearly states that the journalists shouldn’t be prosecuted for expressing their freedom of speech,” Adhikari says.

“In the press, there is a civil law, that law is not created to target the journalists. Rather, it’s a law to change the relationship among the civilians in order to protect the right to privacy.

However, now there is a new privacy law separate from civilian law.

Government has agreed to the demands of the press and implemented more liberal provisions under the privacy law too, which should “protect the press,” says Adhikari.

‘No need for panic’
“There is no need for much panic over these laws.”

But the major concern in regard for journalists is that when an article is “shared on social media by someone once it is in the public domain, the sharer will be jailed rather than the government questioning the publisher of the content,” says Adhikari

Raju Basnet, editor-in-chief of Khojtalas Weekly and Khojtalasa.com, was arrested on September 10 over alleged cybercrime because of a report exposing an attempt to transfer the ownership of land by Harisiddhi Brick Industries in Lalitpur to a few private individuals.

It was alleged that the transaction of the land had the involvement of the Nepal Communist Party’s (NCP) lawmaker Pampha Bhusal and other leaders in the party, reports Myrepublic.

“I have spoken against this bill in the Parliament, and now the government has taken a high road and the journalist Raju Basnet has been released,” says Adhikari.

“A different person has been jailed for sharing information on social media,” he adds.

The government has taken matters into their own hands and have started prosecuting people.

Misuse of the law
“It is not right for the state to prosecute the individual by using the police force,” he says.

“Should there be an issue of defamation, we can always work under the defamation law. But without evoking the defamation law, going against the constitution is not a right thing,” says Adhikari.

“If there is an issue of defamation and if the subject doesn’t want to take a legal process, there is always an option to express your grievance to the Press Council”, says Adhikari.

“People are not being prosecuted due to the law, however, it is due to the misuse of the law, that has created panic in the country”, says Adhikari.

But Gopal Basnyat, news editor at Radio Nepal, says the new law makes a journalist “reveal their sources,” which is not only a threat to the press but also a threat to whistleblowers.

“We cannot reveal the sources as a journalist, it is our duty to protect them, it is against our press code of conduct,” says Basnyat.

Risk of prosecution
Under the new law, “if we don’t reveal the source, we risk being prosecuted.”

“It does affect free speech. The FNJ has been protesting against this law,” says Basnyat.

Many other journalists who have been protesting against this law, which some describe as more draconian than the Nepali law during the Panchyaat Kall era.

A Practising Advocate at the Supreme Court, Ashish Adhikari, says that the “Act in itself is good but the implication of the Act [by the government] part is questionable”.

He adds: “The first publisher isn’t being convicted but, the person who shares information that is already in the public domain is being charged and prosecuted.”

Rahul Bhattarai is a student journalist on the Postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies (Journalism) reporting on the Asia-Pacific Journalism course at AUT University.

• New Nepal criminal code raises fears of curbs on free press
• 15 things in the new national law every Nepali should know about

Dr Swee Ang, doctor on board Al Awda, reports on the events from July 29 when Israeli navy commandos stormed the Freedom Flotilla boat Al Awda, hijacked and diverted it from its intended course to break the Gaza blockade, and forced her to go to Israel.

The last leg of the journey of Al Awda (The Return) was scheduled to reach Gaza on 29 July 2018. We were on target to reach Gaza that evening.

There were 22 people on board, including crew, with US$15,000 of antibiotics and bandages for Gaza.

At 12.31 pm we received a missed call from a number beginning with +81… Mikkel was steering the boat at that time. The phone rang again with the message that we were “trespassing into Israeli waters”.

Mikkel replied that we were in international waters and had right of innocent passage according to maritime laws. The accusation of trespassing was repeated again and again with Mikkel repeating the message that we were sailing in international waters.

This carried on for about half an hour, while Al Awda was 42 nautical miles from the coast of Gaza.

Prior to the beginning of this last leg, we had spent 2 days learning non-violent actions and had prepared ourselves in anticipation of Israeli invasion of our boat. Vulnerable individuals especially those with medical conditions were to sit at the rear of the top deck with their hands on the deck table.

The leader of this group was Gerd, a 75-year-old elite Norwegian athlete and she had the help of Lucia a Spanish nurse in her group.

Non-violent barrier
The people who were to provide non-violent barrier to the Israelis coming on deck and taking over the boat formed 3 rows – two rows of threes and the third row of 2 persons blocking the wheelhouse door to protect the wheelhouse for as long as possible.

There were runners between the wheelhouse and the rear of the deck. The leader of the boat, Zohar and I, were at the two ends of the toilets corridor where we looked out at the horizon and inform all of any sightings of armed boats. I laughed at Zohar and said we are the “Toilet Brigade”, but I think Zohar did not find it very funny.

It was probably bad taste under the circumstances. I also would be able to help as a runner and will have accessibility to all parts of the deck in view of being the doctor on board.

Soon we saw at least three large Israeli warships on the horizon with 5 or more speed boats (Zodiacs) zooming towards us. As the Zodiacs approached I saw that they carried soldiers with machine guns and there was on board the boats large machine guns mounted on a stand pointing at our boat.

From my lookout point the first Israeli soldier climbed on board to the cabin level and climbed up the boat ladder to the top deck. His face was masked with a white cloth and following him were many others, all masked. They were all armed with machine guns and small cameras on their chests.

They immediately made to the wheelhouse overcoming the first row by twisting the arms of the participants, lifting Sarah up and throwing her away. Joergen the chef was large to be manhandled so he was tasered before being lifted up.

They attacked the second row by picking on Emelia the Spanish nurse and removed her thus breaking the line. They then approach the door of the wheel house and tasered Charlie, the first mate, and [New Zealand’s Unite union leader] Mike Treen who were obstructing their entry to the wheel house.

Mike bleeding
Charlie was beaten up as well. Mike did not give way with being tasered in his lower limbs so he was tasered in his neck and face. Later on I saw bleeding on the left side of Mike’s face. He was semi-conscious when I examined him.

They broke into the wheelhouse by cutting the lock, forced the engine to be switched off and took down the Palestine flag before taking down the Norwegian flag and trampling on it.

They then cleared all people from the front half of the boat around the wheel house and moved them by force and coercion, throwing them to the rear of the deck. All were forced to sit on the floor at the back, except Gerd, Lucy and the vulnerable people who were seated around the table on wooden benches around her.

Israeli soldiers then formed a line sealing off people from the back and preventing them from coming to the front of the boat again.

As we entered the back of the deck we were all body searched and ordered to surrender our mobile phones or else they would take it by force. This part of search and confiscation was under the command of a woman soldier.

Apart from mobile phones – medicines and wallets were also removed. No one as of today (4 August 2018) got our mobile phones back.

I went to examine Mike and Charlie. Charlie had recovered consciousness and his wrists were tied together with plastic cable ties. Mike was bleeding from the side of his face, still not fully conscious. His hands were very tightly tied together with cable ties and the circulation to his fingers was cut off and his fingers and palm were beginning to swell.

At this stage the entire people seated on the floor shouted demanding that the cable ties be cut. It was about half an hour later before the ties were finally cut off from both of them.

Trampled flag
Around this time Charlie, the first mate, received the Norwegian flag. He was visibly upset telling all of us that the Norwegian flag had been trampled on. Charlie reacted more to the trampling of the Norwegian flag than to his own being beaten and tasered.

The soldiers then started asking for the captain of the boat. The boys then started to reply that they were all the captain. Eventually the Israelis figured out that Herman was the captain and demanded to take him to the wheelhouse. Herman asked for someone to come with him, and I offered to do so.

But as we approached the wheelhouse, I was pushed away and Herman forced into the wheelhouse on his own. Divina, the well known Swedish singer, had meanwhile broken free from the back and went to the front to look through the window of the wheel house.

She started to shout and cry, “Stop – stop they are beating Herman, they are hurting him.”

We could not see what Divina saw, but knew that it was something very disturbing. Later on, when Divina and I were sharing a prison cell, she told me they were throwing Herman against the wall of the wheel house and punching his chest. Divina was forcibly removed and her neck was twisted by the soldiers who took her back to the rear of the deck.

I was pushed back to the rear of the boat again. After a while the boat engine started. I was told later by Gerd who was able to hear Herman tell the story to the Norwegian Consul in prison that the Israelis wanted Herman to start the engine, and threatened to kill him if he would not do so.

But what they did not understand was that with this boat, once the engine stopped it can only be restarted manually in the engine room in the cabin level below.

Arne, the engineer, refused to restart the engine, so the Israelis brought Herman down and hit him in front of Arne making it clear that they will continue to hit Herman if Arne would not start the engine.

Engineer aged 70
Arne is 70 years old, and when he saw Herman’s face went ash colour, he gave in and started the engine manually. Gerd broke into tears when she was narrating this part of the story.

The Israelis then took charge of the boat and drove it to Ashdod.

Once the boat was on course, the Israeli soldiers brought Herman to the medical desk. I looked at Herman and saw that he was in great pain, silent but conscious, breathing spontaneously but shallow breathing.

The Israeli Army doctor was trying to persuade Herman to take some medicine for pain. Herman was refusing the medicine.

The Israeli doctor explained to me that what he was offering Herman was not army medicine but his personal medicine. He gave me the medicine from his hand so that I could check it. It was a small brown glass bottle and I figured that it was some kind of liquid morphine preparation probably the equivalent of oromorph or fentanyl.

I asked Herman to take it and the doctor asked him to take 12 drops after which Herman was carried off and slumped on a mattress at the back of the deck. He was watched over by people around him and fell asleep. From my station I saw he was breathing better.

With Herman settled I concentrated on Larry Commodore, the Native American leader and an environmental activist. He had been voted chief of his tribe twice. Larry has labile asthma and with the stress all around my fear was that he might get a nasty attack, and needed adrenaline injection.

Deep breathing
I was taking Larry through deep breathing exercises. However Larry was not heading for an asthmatic attack, but was engaging an Israeli who covered his face with a black cloth in conversation.

This man was obviously in charge.

I asked for the Israeli man with black mask his name and he called himself Field Marshal Ro…..Larry misheard him and jumped to conclusion that he called himself Field Marshal Rommel and shouted how can he an Israeli take a Nazi name.

“Field Marshal” objected and introduced himself as Field Marshal? Ronan. As I spelt out Ronan he quickly corrected me that his name is Ronen, and he, Field Marshal Ronen, was in charge.

The Israeli soldiers all wore body cameras and were filming us all the time. A box of sandwiches and pears were brought on deck for us. None of us took any of their food as we had decided we do not accept Israeli hypocrisy and charity.

Our chef Joergen had already prepared high calorie high protein delicious brownie with nuts and chocolate, wrapped up in tin foil to be consumed when captured, as we knew it was going to be a long day and night.

Joergen called it food for the journey. Unfortunately when I needed it most, the Israelis took away my food and threw it away. They just told me ”It is forbidden”. I had nothing to eat for 24 hours, refusing Israeli Army food and had no food of my own.

Total darkness
As we sailed towards Israel we could see the coast of Gaza in total darkness. There were 3 oil /gas rigs in the northern sea of Gaza. The brightly burning oil flames contrasted with the total darkness the owners of the fuel were forced to live in.

Just off the shore of Gaza are the largest deposit of natural gas ever discovered and the natural gas belonging to the Palestinians is already being siphoned off by Israel.

As we approached Israel, Zohar our boat leader suggested that we should start saying goodbye to each other. We were probably 2-3 hours from Ashdod. We thanked our boat leader, our captain, the crew, our dear chef, and encouraged each other that we will continue to do all we can to free Gaza and also bring justice to Palestine.

Herman, our captain, who managed to sit up now, gave a most moving talk and some of us were in tears.

We knew that in Ashdod there would be the Israeli media and film crews. We would not enter Ashdod as a people who had lost hope as we were taken captive. So we came off the boat chanting “Free Free Palestine” all the way as we came off.

Mike Treen, the union man, had by then recovered from his heavy tasering and led the chanting with his mega-voice and we filled the night sky of Israel with “Free Free Palestine” as we approached. We did this the whole way down the boat into Ashdod.

We came directly into a closed military zone in Ashdod. It was a sealed off area with many stations. It was specially prepared for the 22 of us. It began with a security x-ray area.

Money belt stolen
I did not realise they retained my money belt as I came out of the x-ray station. The next station was strip search, and it was when I was gathering up my belongings after being stripped when I realised my money belt was no longer with me.

I knew I had about a couple hundred euros and they were trying to steal it. I demanded its return and refused to leave the station until it was produced. I was shouting for the first time.

I was glad I did that as some other people were parted from their cash. The journalist from Al Jazeera, Abdul, had all his credit cards and US1800 taken from him, as well as his watch, satellite phone, his personal mobile, his ID. He thought his possessions were kept with his passport but when he was released for deportation he learnt bitterly that he only got his passport back.

All cash and valuables were never found. They simply vanished.

We were passed from station to station in this closed military zone, stripped searched several times, possessions taken away until in the end all we had was the clothes we were wearing with nothing else except a wrist band with a number on it. All shoe laces were removed as well.

Some of us were given receipts for items taken away, but I had no receipts for anything. We were photographed several times and saw two doctors. At this point I learnt that Larry was pushed down the gangway and injured his foot and sent off to Israeli hospital for check-up. His blood was on the floor.

I was cold and hungry, wearing only one teeshirt and pants by the time they were through with me. My food was taken away; water was taken away, all belongings including reading glasses taken away.

Toilet not allowed
My bladder was about to explode but I am not allowed to go to the toilet. In this state I was brought out to two vehicles – Black Maria painted gray. On the ground next to it were a great heap of ruqsacks and suit cases.

I found mine and was horrified that they had broken into my baggage and took almost everything from it – all clothes clean and dirty, my camera, my second mobile, my books, my Bible, all the medicines I brought for the participants and myself, my toiletries. The suitcase was partially broken.

My ruqsack was completely empty too. I got back two empty cases except for two dirty large man size teeshirts which obviously belonged to someone else. They also left my Freedom Flotilla teeshirt.

I figured out that they did not steal the Flotilla teeshirt as they thought no Israeli would want to wear that teeshirt in Israel. They had not met Zohar and Yonatan who were proudly wearing theirs.

That was a shock as I was not expecting the Israeli Army to be petty thieves as well. So what had become of the glorious Israeli Army of the Six Day War which the world so admired?

I was still not allowed to go to the toilet, but was pushed into the Maria van, joined by Lucia, the Spanish nurse, and after some wait taken to Givon Prison. I could feel myself shivering uncontrollably on the journey.

The first thing our guards did in Givon Prison was to order me to go to the toilet to relieve myself. It was interesting to see that they knew I needed to go desperately but had prevented me for hours to! By the time we were re-x-rayed and searched again it must have been about 5 – 6 am.

Rusty and dusty
Lucia and I were then put in a cell where Gerd, Divina, Sarah and Emelia were already asleep. There were three double decker bunk beds – all rusty and dusty.

Divina did not get the proper dose of her medicines; Lucia was refused her own medicine and given an Israeli substitute which she refused to take. Divina and Emelia went straight on to hunger strike.

The jailors were very hostile using simple things like refusal of toilet paper and constant slamming of the prison iron door, keeping the light of the cell permanently on, and forcing us to drink rusty water from the tap, screaming and shouting at us constantly to vent their anger at us.

The guards addressed me as “China” and treated me with utter contempt. On the morning of 30 July 2018, the British Vice-Consul visited me. Some kind person had called them about my whereabouts. That was a blessing as after that I was called “England” and there was a massive improvement in the way England was treated compared to the way China was treated.

It crossed my mind that “Palestine” would be trampled over, and probably killed.

At 6.30am, 31 July 2018, we heard Larry yelling from the men’s cell across the corridor that he needed a doctor. He was obviously in great pain and crying. We women responded by asking the wardens to allow me to go across to see Larry as I might be able to help.

We shouted “We have a doctor” and used our metal spoons to hit the iron cell gate get their attention. They lied and said their doctor would be over in an hour. We did not believe them and started again. The doctor actually turned up at 4 pm, about 10 hours later and Larry was sent straight to hospital.

Women punished
Meanwhile to punish the women for supporting Larry’s demand, they brought hand cuffs for Sarah and took Divina and me to another cell to separate us from the rest. We were told we were not going to be allowed out for our 30 minutes fresh air break and a drink of clean water in the yard. I heard Gerd saying “Big deal”.

Suddenly Divina was taken out with me to the courtyard and Divina given 4 cigarettes at which point she broke down and cried. Divina had worked long hours at the wheelhouse steering the boat. She had seen what happened to Herman.

The prison had refused to give her one of her medicines and given her only half the dose of the other. She was still on hunger strike to protest our kidnapping in international waters. It was heartbreaking to see Divina cry. One of the wardens, who called himself Michael, started talking to us about how he will have to protect his family against those who want to drive the Israelis out.

And how the Palestinians did not want to live in peace…and it was not Israel’s fault. But things suddenly changed with the arrival of an Israeli judge and we were all treated with some decency even though he only saw a few of us personally. His job was to tell us that a Tribunal will be convened the following day and each prisoner had been allocated a time to appear, and we must have our lawyer with us when we appear.

Divina by the end of the day became very giddy and very unwell so I persuaded her to come out of hunger strike, and also she agreed to sign a deportation order. Shortly after that possibly at 6 pm since we had no watches and mobile phones, we were told Lucia, Joergen, Herman, Arne, Abdul from Al Jazeera and I would be deported within 24 hours and we would be taken to be imprisoned in the deportation prison in Ramle near Ben Gurion airport immediately to wait there.

It was going to be the same Ramle Prison from which I was deported in 2014. I saw the same five strong old palm trees still standing up proud and tall. They are the only survivors of the Palestinian village destroyed in 1948.

When we arrived at Ramle prison Abdul found to his horror that he his money, his credit cards, his watch, his satellite phone, his own mobile phone, his ID card were all missing – he was entirely destitute.

We had a whip round and raised around 100 euros as a contribution towards his taxi fare from the airport to home. How can the Israeli Army be so corrupt and heartless to rob someone of everything?

Shocking behaviour
We, the six women on board al-Awda had learnt that they tried to completely humiliate and dehumanise us in every way possible. We were also shocked at the behaviour of the Israeli Army, especially petty theft and their treatment of international women prisoners. Men jailors regularly entered the women’s cell without giving us decent notice to put our clothes on.

They also tried to remind us of our vulnerability at every stage. We know they would have preferred to kill us but of course the publicity incurred in so doing might be unfavourable to the international image of Israel.

If we were Palestinians it would be much worse with physical assaults and probably loss of lives. The situation is therefore dire for the Palestinians.

As to international waters, it looks as though there is no such thing for the Israeli Navy. They can hijack and abduct boats and persons in international water and get away with it. They acted as though they own the Mediterranean Sea.

They can abduct any boat and kidnap any passengers, put them in prison and criminalise them.

We cannot accept this. We have to speak up, stand up against this lawlessness, oppression and brutality. We were completely unarmed.

Our only crime according to them is we are friends of the Palestinians and wanted to bring medical aid to them. We wanted to brave the military blockade to do this.

This is not a crime.

Palestinian toll
In the week we were sailing to Gaza, they had shot dead 7 Palestinians and wounded more than 90 with life bullets in Gaza. They had further shut down fuel and food to Gaza.

Two million Palestinians in Gaza live without clean water, with only 2-4 hours of electricity, in homes destroyed by Israeli bombs, in a prison blockaded by land, air and sea for 12 years.

The hospitals of Gaza since the 30 March had treated more than 9071 wounded persons, 4348 shot by machine guns from 100 Israeli snipers while they were mounting peaceful demonstrations inside the borders of Gaza on their own land.

Most of the gunshot wounds were to the lower limbs and with depleted treatment facilities the limbs will suffer amputation.

In this period more than 165 Palestinians had been shot dead by the same snipers, including medics and journalists, children and women.

The chronic military blockade of Gaza has depleted the hospitals of all surgical and medical supplies.

This massive attack on an unarmed Freedom Flotilla bringing friends and some medical relief is an attempt to crush all hope for Gaza. As I write, I learnt that our sister Flotilla boat, Freedom, has also been kidnapped by the Israeli Navy while in international waters.

But we will not stop, we must continue to be strong to bring hope and justice to the Palestinians and be prepared to pay the price, and to be worthy of the Palestinians. As long as I survive I will exist to resist. To do less will be a crime.

All crew and passengers on the Al Awda, including Kiwi human rights defender Mike Treen, have since been deported to their countries. Treen spoke last night at a packed public meeting in the Freemans Bay Community Centre. Those on board the second flotilla boat to be captured, the Freedom, are currently undergoing a similar process of being deported from an Israeli prison. Asia Pacific Report has shared information with the New Zealand humanitarian group Kia Ora Gaza.

Post-mortems should be compulsory in alleged sorcery-related deaths, says Papua New Guinea’s National Doctors’ Association (NDA).

Legislation must be enacted by Parliament to require autopsies, or post-mortems, to be performed to confirm cause of death, NDA president Dr James Naipao said yesterday.

“Perpetrators who harm or murder an innocent person must be dealt with severely by the courts. In this way, sorcery related attacks and deaths can be stamped out,” Dr Naipao said following recent attacks and deaths of alleged sorcery “practioners”, or sangumas.

He said belief in sorcery and sorcery as the cause death were primitive beliefs implanted and entwined in people and cultures since the beginning of time, and they were worldwide beliefs.

In a number of cases, these accusations were a result of someone in the village getting sick or dying unexpectedly, Dr Naipao said.

“In the West, this belief has died down due to evolution of medicine and knowledge.

“In Africa, Asia and some parts of the Pacific, despite modernism, belief in sorcery has not departed the people and the cultures that made them who they are.

“In PNG, a country of 1000 languages and more than 1000 tribes, sorcery and sanguma beliefs are embedded in a few cultures in certain regions of the country,” he said.

‘Ritualistic madness’
He said however, with intermarriages and claims of purchase of this “ritualistic madness” for security and revenge, sorcery belief was now becoming a countrywide belief.

He said it took the West almost 600 years to change its mindset.

“Cause of death is usually and commonly from an illness and trauma, it can be accidental, intentional or self-inflicted.

“At a very old age, death is also unavoidable and when death becomes unexpected, our primitive evolved mind, despite how educated we are or not, will point out sorcery as the cause of death.”

According to a study by the Divine Word University, PNG’s National Research Institute and the Australian National University, in the past 20 years, there has been an average of 30 sorcery-related deaths and 72 incidents of torture reported in the local newspapers each year.

Naipao said this was a huge challenge and a burden that PNG was facing at present.

“Slowly as Papua New Guineans transit to what is in the West now, sorcery will slowly die out with the same time span as the West presumably,” he said.

Grace Auka Salmang is a reporter with the PNG Post-Courier.

• 97 convicted in mass trial for PNG sorcery killings
• More PNG articles

An unprecedented level of mismanagement of Papua New Guinea’s affairs since 2012 has caused serious health issues, including widespread suffering and preventable deaths, reports Loop PNG.

The opposition’s Shadow Minister for Health and HIV/AIDS, Joseph Yopyyopy, has called for swift and appropriate government action to prevent further deterioration of PNG’s most basic and essential health services.

He warned of “catastrophic consequences” resulting from government inaction while noting that the PNC-led government drastically cut health spending for the past three years, including 2017.

Yopyyopy cited most recent instances, including:

• Laloki Psychiatric Hospital in Central Province being on the verge of closure with patients likely to be sent back home to their families due to shortage of medical drugs at the hospital. (Director of Medical Services at the hospital Dr Ludwig Nanawar revealed this as the institution marked World Mental Health Day on Oct 10);
• Health workers in Manus Province have been without such medicine for more than a month;
• Medicines running out PNG-wide with health facilities lacking essential equipment and in a state of disrepair;
• Health workers not being paid properly with doctors and health workers threatening stop work; and
• Recent media reports of a story from Abau district where a ward councillor claimed more than 20 people had died in the past two years due to medicine shortage.(People had to be taken to Port Moresby for treatment while some died along the way).

Other unreported cases are indicators of very serious system failure, the shadow minister said.

Yopyyopy noted that from the 2015 to 2017 budget, health funding was cut by 40 percent from K1.7 billion to K1.2 billion.

He also warned of further planned cuts of up to 30 percent over the next five years (to about K850 million).

Yopyyopy cited some “shocking” statistics about PNG’s state of health, including:

• In 2016, health cuts hurt many people, but fortunately the impact was softened by external health funding which may not be available;
• According to latest reports, PNG’s tuberculosis (TB) crisis is yet to be brought under control;
• ChildFund Australia estimates that up to 9000 PNG citizens died from TB in the past three years – one out of four are children);
• On PNG’s maternal and child mortality, a government decision in late 2016 to pay for women to give birth in a clinic or hospital was in fact an “admission of defeat”;
• Health experts have explicitly expressed that the health funding cuts have destroyed people in rural and remote areas where the need is urgent; and
• Up to 1500 women die in childbirth each year, and about 45 babies out of every 1000 die.

The UN estimates that about 12,000 children under five die each year, reports Loop PNG.

Also, a recent Asia Development Bank (ADB) report shows that PNG has some of the worst health indicators in the Asia-Pacific region:

• The prevalence of stunting among children under the age of five is 49.5 percent, ranking 29th out of 30 countries with information;
• The prevalence of malnutrition (wasting) among children under five is 14.3 percent, the highest rate for 30 countries;
• The maternal mortality ratio per 100,000 live births is 215, the equal third highest of 40 countries;
• The under-five mortality rate per 1000 live births is 57, the fourth highest of 43 countries;
• The number of new HIV aids infections in 2015 is 0.36 per 1000 of the uninfected population – the highest of 21 countries;
• The TB incidence per 100,000 people is 432, the second highest of 44 countries; and
• The incidence of malaria per 1000 people is 185, nearly double the next highest incidence.

Yopyyopy said facts speak volumes and it is incumbent on the government to stop painting a false picture when in fact, there are very serious underlying health issues affecting PNG.

“The government is not only duty bound, but morally obliged to put the health issues of PNG citizens above all else,” he added.