After years of relying on a tiny deteriorating health centre, the remote Yambaitok community is set to open its newly built facility, bringing renewed healthcare access to locals and surrounding tribes.
Story by Kowara Bell
Dedicated community health worker Patrick Dickson has been serving at Yambaitok health centre for almost nine years. Working in a bush materials building, he has personally experienced the pressing need for a proper healthcare facility to support locals from Yambaitok and neighbouring communities.
Thanks to the ten crucial MAF flights that delivered the required building materials from Kompiam, the new facility will feature a labour ward, a small outpatient area and rooms to accommodate patients. The transformation will be massive: Patrick will no longer work from a tiny, one-room hut with woven-matting walls and shelving made from small tree trunks.
Tucked away in the remote lower highlands of Papua New Guinea’s Enga province, in a region often marked by tribal conflicts, people from the greater Yambaitok area have only one option for locally available health care: the single health centre manned by Patrick.
“There are no other health facilities nearby,” Patrick said. “Most neighbouring communities come to Yambaitok health centre, which is centrally located and situated in a community free from conflicts.
“On a normal a day, I attend to around twenty patients, and in a month, this number reaches about four hundred, many of them walking for hours just to get assistance here,” Patrick said.
Across scattered communities people trek over mountains, cross vast rivers and navigate through dense rainforests to get from village to village.
From the neighbouring village of Elem, Sikit Samo, a devoted brother, endured a six-hour journey to Yambaitok just to get medication for his sick sister, highlighting the hardship many in this isolated area must face to access healthcare. While Elem has a small health centre, it’s not staffed, and the shelves are empty.
“My sister is bedridden, so I had walk here to Yambaitok to get medicine for her,” said Sikit.
“The health centre and the medicines are important to us and MAF is the only service that delivers both medicines and doctors to our communities.”
Reflecting on the new changes the new health centre will bring, Patricks speaks profound words, emphasising that it is his faith in Christ that has kept him going over the years.
“It is not through my strength but by God’s strength that I am able to see new changes in Yambaitok and also be able to look after hundreds of people in this remote area.”
He added that the new build will provide enough capacity to cater for many sick patients in Yambaitok and other neighbouring communities.
The newly constructed health centre in Yambaitok will soon open its doors to offer improved healthcare services to all those who walk in to seek assistance.
