Where have all the doctors gone? An analysis of national medical officers

Criticisms of deployment of national doctors have ranged from their lack in rural areas to their lack as clinical specialists. It has been charged that after 27 years of producing doctors there is not one national doctor working anywhere in the highlands. An analysis of all the Papua New Guinea medical graduates from Fiji School of Medicine, medical graduates from Papuan Medical College and medical graduates from University of Papua New Guinea has been done. There were 124 doctors trained during the past 27 years. Of these only 66 (59 national and 7 non-national) are currently available. These 66 doctors are evenly divided up as general duties medical officers throughout the country except in the highlands provinces, medical administrators including provincial health officers, specialists or trainee specialists and other categories including 9% in private practice. These 66 doctors comprise 28% of the total doctors in the country. They make up 82% of the medical administrators, 40% of provincial health officers, 20% of medically qualified lecturers, 17% of general duties medical officers, 12% of doctors staffing rural health centres and 9% of Health Department specialists. 38% of national Health Department or Church doctors available for service are rural-based compared to 49% of non-national Health Department or Church doctors. The basic problem is the small pool of national doctors available. Only 4 highlands doctors are available, the first two graduating as recently as 1975. The proportion of highlands medical students is increasing each year. Many national doctors worked in highland provinces in the past and the killing of Dr. Luke Rovin in 1972 has probably been a factor in the absence of national doctors from the highlands in recent years. When more highlands doctors become available there will be national doctors working in the highlands.