Milne Bay PHA reintroduces fees to meet funding gaps

The Milne Bay Provincial Health has reintroduced user pay fees for its services, a last resort to fill in funding gaps to keep its operations running.

The fee imposition came into force in September and will continue indefinitely.

Dr. Dale Frank, Acting Director, Curative Health Services (CHS) of the Milne Bay Provincial Health Authority (PHA) said the service should be free, but it cannot be helped.

"The user pay fees for the hospital have slightly increased, especially for pharmacies. Previously, we would charge K3 for an item, meaning amoxicillin for five days would cost K3, which compared to a local pharmacy that will range between K18 kina to K30 kina," he said.

Dr. Frank said, the charge would not eat into a lot of people's budgets but it will help the hospital to maintain a stable supply of drugs.

Dr Frank further said, "Charging the service fee to the adults at two kina and children at one kina at least will help the clinic to do some of these things themselves as they also have to pay their water bills and electricity bills, which can take a while for the PHA to pay out."

He said, "In this way, the children's clinic, pay K70 every month for water bill from the K1 received and service continues instead of having to be threatened that the PHA will cut off their water and then they cannot service the children that come the next day."

Rural facilities have expenses such as transportation, generator fuel and referral costs which are contributed by PHA. In this way, they can earn a bit of money to keep them going if PHAs are not able to.

He clears that cases like tuberculosis, HIV AIDS, antenatal care, prison referrals, in terms of transmission are helped through the savings, as they can have catastrophic impacts on public.

Chief Executive Officer of the Melbourne Bay Health Authority, Dr Perister Mamadi, confirms they effected the use of pay fees in September after bearing the brunt of primary health care with little to no support from government.

He says it's difficult to maintain services with other areas unsupported.

"That is why we have this tough decision of charging people and we don't know what they think of us but we have to charge fee, so we maintain the amount of drugs that come through," he said.

Rural facilities have expenses such as transportation, generator fuel and referral costs which are borne by the PHA.