Following is an excerpt from Monday’s edition of The National describing the ordeal one man went through to get health care for his injured niece. It is hard to imagine having to go through all that but this is often the norm in the more remote areas of PNG. And in reality the little girl was fortunate. Had they not lived on the south side of the country, adjacent to Australia, things very possibly would have turned out quite differently.
“A PAPUA New Guinea man made a four-day trip to Cairns, Australia, carrying his badly injured six-year-old niece who had her intestines exposed after an accident. Forty-year-old farmer Lambai Pisau was called to his niece Dulcie Nakai’s village school on the PNG-Indonesian border last April 23 after she fell out of a classroom window and landed on a sharp hibiscus tree. The fall pierced young Dulcie’s abdomen, exposing her intestines. Mr Pisau took his niece to their remote village’s first aid post by canoe only to find the medical officer was away for the night distributing donated mosquito nets. He treated his niece as best as he could using a bandage and tylenol before the pair endured a five-hour ambulance ride to Morehead station on April 24. From Morehead, the two travelled eight hours in a motorised dinghy, which constantly broke down, before spending the night in a bush hut at the mouth of a crocodile-infested river. On Sunday, it was another four hours journey in the dinghy to Boigu island in the Torres Strait. A medical team on the island had a helicopter transfer to Thursday island where the pair was met by the Royal Flying Doctor Service and flown to Cairns (Australia), arriving early the next day (Monday). Surgeons at Cairns Base Hospital successfully conducted life-saving surgery on Dulcie and she is now resting comfortably.”
The full text of the article can be found at: http://www.thenational.com.pg/050409/nation8.php.
Thank God. It’s a miracle that the child survived such an ordeal.