SOCIAL VIOLENCE IS RIFE in Papua New Guinea and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF - Doctors Without Borders), which has worked here since 2009, provides medical and psychosocial care to survivors of sexual and domestic violence.
Contributing factors to the violence are manifold and include poverty, urbanisation and unemployment, drug and alcohol abuse, and limited government capacity to provide adequate care.
Lae is PNG’s second largest city, and MSF runs a Family Support Centre at Angau Memorial General Hospital. Family Support Centres offer a safe space to people escaping domestic or social violence.
Patients receive medical care, but also social and psychological support. MSF staff at the centre offer comprehensive, free, medical and psychosocial care to around 200 new patients a month.
In the rural town of Tari, in the southern highlands, MSF teams provide emergency surgery at Tari hospital and work in a Family Support Centre. In 2010, staff carried out more than 13,000 general consultations and more than 5,400 mental health consultations in Tari and Lae general hospitals.
The Medical and Emotional Needs of Survivors of Family and Sexual Violence in Papua New Guinea was published in December 2010 and reports on MSF’s experience in the provision of medical and psychosocial care in the country.
MSF makes a number of concrete recommendations for action by national authorities, civil society and international donors, particularly regarding the establishment and operation of Family Support Centres.
Source: Médecins Sans Frontières
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