A young girl’s battle against an infectious disease shows how support from everyday Australians can help save the lives of vulnerable children as the COVID-19 crisis in Papua New Guinea escalates.
By Rita Mu
Seven-year-old Jenny lives in Papua New Guinea’s sprawling capital city of Port Moresby.
She lives with her mother Mary and older sister Princess in a poor residential street. Their home is made from the bare bones of a building that was burnt down several years ago.
The family’s backyard is the site of a wreckage of an old car.
This is where Jenny spends her time. She loves to play elastics and “jingle jangle” with her friends.
Jenny is cheeky and fun-loving.
When she grows up she wants to be a pilot.
“I want to fly to Australia to visit my aunt,” Jenny says.
She is full of energy and has so much determination.
But for children like Jenny in Papua New Guinea (PNG), the odds are against them.
Jenny is one of many children in PNG who face the threat of life-threatening infectious diseases every day.
A country no stranger to outbreaks
When ChildFund first met Jenny in early 2020, COVID-19 was still very much unheard of in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The country was still reeling from an outbreak of polio – 18 years after it was eliminated – and dealing with sporadic outbreaks of measles, a frighteningly regular occurrence in Pacific Island nations.
Many children and families were also battling tuberculosis (TB), an airborne bacterial disease that is endemic in PNG.
Cities like Port Moresby are hotbeds for infectious disease.
Many residents live in overcrowded, poverty-stricken settlements.
A single dwelling may be shared by several families.
Jenny was diagnosed with TB in 2020.
“I didn’t think it was TB because she was very active,” says Jenny’s mother Mary. “I know that children with TB are usually weak, so I didn’t think Jenny was sick.
“I was losing sleep when my oldest daughter Princess was diagnosed with TB. She was only six months old. She lost a lot of weight. I was scared. I feared she might die.”
Tuberculosis is an infectious disease that generally attacks the lungs. Common symptoms include a persistent cough, chest pains, a fever, fatigue and weight loss. If left untreated, TB can be life-threatening.
Patients are generally prescribed a six to nine-month course of antibiotics. When they do not complete their full course of medication, it can lead to the development of drug-resistant forms of TB. These more virulent forms of the disease require a long and expensive treatment program. Patients are typically on a drug regime for a two-year period; in this case the chance of recovering from the disease is only 50%.
Worldwide, one in 10 people with tuberculosis is a child. In Papua New Guinea, it is one in four.
These figures may not even paint the full picture.
Many children with TB do not appear in the statistics because they are never diagnosed.
“I am worried I will lose one of my children,” Mary told ChildFund in 2020 after Jenny was diagnosed with TB.
“In PNG everybody dies with all kinds of diseases. Every day someone dies.
“If you have money people might see you, but if you don’t have money then you have to go to the back of the line.”
Neighbouring countries, worlds apart
Papua New Guinea is Australia’s closest neighbour, about 160km from our coastline, but the two countries could not be further apart when it comes to healthcare.
There is 1 doctor per 10,000 people in PNG, compared with 37 doctors per 10,000 people in Australia.
Unlike in Australia, many children in PNG are malnourished and under-vaccinated, making them particularly susceptible to deadly diseases.
Children in PNG are more than 12 times less likely to reach their 5th birthday than children in Australia.
For children like Jenny, the odds are against them.
With COVID-19 sweeping through PNG and the country’s health system at breaking point, accessing basic health services for children like Jenny is more difficult than ever.
Will you please help protect children during the COVID-19 crisis and ensure they can continue the treatment they need when they are sick?
With the rapid rise of COVID-19 cases in PNG since mid-February 2021, the country’s already fragile health system has been placed under enormous pressure. With large numbers of health workers and patients diagnosed with the virus, hospitals across the country have been forced to shut wards and departments, leaving children like Jenny and their families without access to essential healthcare services.
The past year has been incredibly tough for Jenny and her family. Because of lockdown measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the clinic that Jenny was attending was closed and she almost did not complete her six-month course of antibiotics.
A TB Treatment Supporter trained by ChildFund was able to get Jenny’s medicine to her.
Tuberculosis Treatment Supporters are community-based health volunteers who are trained and supported by ChildFund to identify the symptoms of TB and ensure children like Jenny complete their full course of medication. These health volunteers are critical to helping patients living in poor communities fully recover from TB and prevent the spread of more virulent forms of the disease.
In March 2021 – as the COVID-19 crisis in PNG began to peak – ChildFund staff member Olive visited Jenny in Port Moresby.
“The TB Treatment supporter played a vital role in ensuring Jenny's treatment was not interrupted,” Jenny's mother Mary told Olive.
Jenny has now fully recovered from TB and is doing well.
Tens of thousands of people in PNG have been diagnosed with the COVID-19 since February 2021.
Families living in poverty like Jenny’s are particularly vulnerable.
Jenny and her family do not have access to the internet, phones or a television, and have been getting their information about the disease from people around them. This information has not always been accurate.
ChildFund is working with government ministries, schools and health authorities to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 in PNG, by ramping up the efforts of community health volunteers, educating children and families about the disease, and raising awareness about good hygiene and sanitation practices.
While Jenny survived TB, there are still many children who are seriously ill and facing infectious diseases, and who are struggling to access the healthcare they need because hospitals and clinics are overwhelmed by COVID-19 cases.
As a parent it’s hard to accept that so much of our children’s lives are largely beyond our control. We send them off to school with the hope that their teachers will nurture their learning, and ensure they feel safe and cared for.
With most Australian schools having banned corporal punishment, it’s a reminder of how far we’ve come in eliminating the risk of physical harm from our classrooms.
Classroom violence in the Asia-Pacific
Unfortunately for many children in the Asia Pacific, getting hit, pinched, slapped, beaten or kicked by a teacher is still a too common occurrence.
In Papua New Guinea – a country closer to our shores than New Zealand – children are often physically punished at school; at the very place where they are supposed to feel safe to learn and play.
Despite the gathering strength of a global movement to ban it, corporal punishment is still routinely administered in schools in many countries in the Asia-Pacific region.
This is despite the overwhelming evidence that physical punishment in schools inhibits learning and can be harmful to their physical and mental health.
As key indicators of schooling improve in these countries, thanks to domestic investment in education and international aid initiatives, corporal punishment remains an entrenched problem.
Whypolicy change is not enough
Here in Australia, corporal punishment has been removed from our classrooms through strong legal measures, coupled with a social and cultural shift away from techniques of classroom management which rely on physical punishment, to alternatives such as positive discipline.
But for countries like Papua New Guinea, which have committed to changing policy to prohibit corporal punishment, official policy change alone has not been enough.
A baseline survey completed in 2018 by ChildFund Australia reveals that in one region of Papua New Guinea’s Central Province, over 80% of children reported experiencing corporal punishment. Many of these children reported going to school in fear of being smacked by their teacher.
In many of our neighbouring countries, the acceptance of corporal punishment and its place in the classroom is deeply embedded in generations of families and teachers – just as it once was here in Australia.
When I visit schools as part of ChildFund’s education programs in the Asia-Pacific region, I’m routinely told by children, parents and even the teachers themselves that corporal punishment is common. Many of these parents and teachers were themselves victims of corporal punishment.
Changing cultural norms
Breaking the cycle requires changing attitudes and cultural norms, while also adopting and accepting a new, unfamiliar approach to discipline.
If we are not able to break this cycle of physical abuse in the classroom, another generation of children will grow up accepting that violence is okay, and may be relied upon as a means to resolve future challenges later in life.
Papua New Guineans say that they are deeply dissatisfied with the way their society and their communities handle conflict and the ready resort to violence. Many, however, are yet to be persuaded of the link between violence directed at children at school and in the home and broader, social issues.
ChildFund staff on the ground in Papua New Guinea believe that the cultural acceptance of hitting kids in the classroom can be overturned through sensitive community education and by giving teachers new tools for discipline through contemporary teacher training programs.
These initiatives work to reduce corporal punishment by educating teachers about the negative effects of physical punishment on children, and offering them alternative approaches to use in classroom management.
Safe spaces encourage learning
It is heartening to watch children benefit from learning in environments where they feel safe and valued, have access to high-quality educational materials, and have the support of thoughtful teachers who care about their wellbeing.
But reducing the incidence of corporal punishment will take time, patience and greater investment – in teacher training programs, establishing School Boards of Management, and encouraging greater parent involvement in school administration.
It won’t happen overnight – as was the case in Australia last century. But eliminating corporal punishment in schools is not an insurmountable task, as our experience at home shows.
I look forward to a day soon when children throughout our region can go to school without fear.
About Richard Geeves Richard Geeves is the Senior Advisor, Education at ChildFund Australia. Originally an educator, Richard is passionate about ensuring access to education for children living in marginalised communities, and international development issues. During his career, Richard has worked with Indigenous communities in Arnhem Land, with primary school teachers in Cambodia, and with development staff undertaking health, water and sanitation, child protection, and education projects in Papua New Guinea and south-east Asia. During his time at ChildFund, Richard has developed and implemented the organisation’s Development Effectiveness Framework, and now provides specialist education expertise to programs in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, PNG and Vietnam.
