WHO mission spotlights the distance between communities and care in East Sepik
In East Sepik Province, the route to basic health services can be long, costly, and uncertain. A WHO-led joint mission to Papua New Guinea from 12 to 16 October 2026 focused on that problem in practical terms: how to strengthen primary health care so communities can reach essential services closer to home, rather than traveling far when nearby health or aid posts are closed.
The mission was led by Dr Rajendra Yadav, World Health Organization Representative in Papua New Guinea, and brought together the National Department of Health, WHO, UNICEF, UNAIDS, PATH’s Accelerated Immunization and Health Systems Strengthening programme, the East Sepik Provincial Health Administration, and other development partners. Technical leads joined across primary health care, health emergencies, immunization, antimicrobial resistance, and health information systems. The composition mattered because the barriers in East Sepik are not isolated clinical problems. They involve staffing, supply chains, outreach, supervision, transport, and the physical functioning of facilities at multiple levels of the system.
The first message from the mission was simple. Health services that exist on paper are not enough if patients still cannot reach them when they are needed.
Facility visits exposed the operational gaps behind routine care
From 13 to 15 October, the delegation visited six facilities across Levels 1 to 4: Maprik District Hospital, Naramko Community Health Post, Huliwa Aid Post, Sassoya Health Centre, Tumarau Sub-Health Centre, and Passam Aid Post. Those visits allowed the team to see routine service delivery up close and to assess what is required for primary care to function day after day.
The observed services included immunization, antenatal care, supervised delivery, tuberculosis care, HIV/AIDS services, and other priority programmes. The facilities were also assessed for the basic conditions that determine whether care can continue reliably: health workers, medical supplies, power, water, and transport. In primary care, these are not peripheral comforts. They are the difference between a clinic that can deliver services consistently and one that struggles to function even when staff are present.
Discussions with health workers and district authorities centered on achievements, operational challenges, and possible ways to improve the quality, continuity, and reach of care. Facility-level observations and local discussions together painted a consistent picture: the service model needs reinforcement at every link, from the community-facing aid post to the district hospital.
Community concerns centered on medicines, distance, and closed posts
Following each facility visit, the delegation met local government leaders, ward councillors, Village Health Assistants, and community representatives. Those conversations brought the most immediate pressures into focus. Communities raised shortages of essential medicines and the long journeys required to reach care. When Health or Aid posts are closed, the distance to the next available service grows quickly, and so does the burden on families already coping with geographic barriers.
In practical terms, that means a missed consultation can become a delayed antenatal visit, a missed child immunization, or a treated illness that worsens before help is reached. For a province with dispersed communities, geography becomes a clinical risk factor when the health system cannot consistently operate nearby.
The mission also explored how local leadership could help reduce those barriers. Conversations included integrated outreach services for communities facing geographic and other obstacles to facility access, along with the possibility of maternal waiting homes and health worker housing on facility grounds. Those ideas are operational, not abstract. Maternal waiting homes can reduce delays for women approaching delivery. Housing for health workers can improve the likelihood that staff remain present where services are most needed.
Collaboration is the working model for stronger primary care
The joint mission repeatedly returned to one theme: primary health care cannot be strengthened by a single institution working alone. It depends on coordination across programs, reliable immunization and outreach activities, strong community participation, and sustained engagement between health workers and the people they serve. Intersectoral collaboration also matters because some of the obstacles to care sit outside the clinic walls, including transport and basic infrastructure.
Dr Yadav stressed that the visit was not designed to judge the province, but to listen, learn, and work alongside communities, health authorities, front-line workers, and partners to identify practical actions. That approach fits the reality of rural health systems. A service model improves when the people delivering care and the people using it can describe the same barriers and agree on realistic fixes.
The debrief at the end of the mission brought together the East Sepik Provincial Health Authority chief executive officer, the board chairman, provincial health leadership, and development partners. Observations from facility visits and stakeholder meetings are intended to guide continued collaboration and follow-up action across the province. The focus now is not simply on identifying need, but on converting shared priorities into service delivery that is more dependable, more integrated, and closer to where people live.
A high-level mission can reveal where a health system is most fragile, but the most concrete findings in East Sepik were already visible before the final debrief: medicine shortages, closed posts, long travel times, and uneven support for essential services. Those are the conditions that make routine care difficult and preventive care easy to lose.
The next challenge is implementation. East Sepik’s communities, health workers, and local leaders now face the harder task of turning a five-day visit into sustained access to immunization, maternal care, tuberculosis and HIV services, and the other basic programmes that define functioning primary care.