At Angau Memorial Hospital in Lae, a father lies quietly on his bed, clinging to life with nothing but a drip keeping him going. His name is Simion Alo Sawalu, and for nearly five long weeks, he has been fighting an illness without the very thing a hospital is meant to provide—medicine.
Simion, from Siwi-Utame in the Ialibu-Pangia District of Southern Highlands, was rushed to Angau when his condition worsened. His family believed that once he reached a major referral hospital, help would finally come. Instead, they were met with a painful truth many Papua New Guineans now know too well: there is simply no medicine.
Doctors ran tests. They confirmed what was wrong. But when it came time to treat him, they could only say the words no patient should ever hear; “You have to buy your own medicine. We don’t have any here.”
Since then, Simion’s family has been running back and forth to private clinics in Lae, scraping together money to purchase basic drugs the hospital should have supplied. Not one dose has been provided by the public ward. Not even one.
If this is the reality in Angau Memorial Hospital, one of the country’s biggest, what hope is there for the tiny aid posts tucked deep in the mountains? What about rural health centres where a single nurse serves thousands and medicine shelves have been empty for months? Parents in remote villages walk for hours carrying sick children, only to be told to return home empty-handed.
The situation is not just a shortage; it is a national emergency quietly stealing lives. Hospitals were meant to be places of healing, yet for many families like Simion’s, they have become waiting rooms for despair.
As drug theft, procurement failures and chronic supply issues continue, ordinary Papua New Guineans are left asking: How many more must suffer before the system is fixed?
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