Hello again everyone,

 

It has been a long time. PNG has just had it's 43rd Annual Medical Symposium. The theme was Oral Health, Head and Neck Diseases.

 

We have our first new Dentistry graduates. Dentistry training was stopped in 1985. It is good to see things are moving in the right direction. We have had a lot of help from our Australian friends and colleagues.

 

We saw a few faces in Ian Garbett, Rodney Itaki, Willie Mol from overseas and the other PNG based members. There may be a few more overseas members but I had to leave the symposium early due to work commitments and did not meet up with them.

 

Willie presented at the main symposium meeting. I'm sure he'll give us a run down on his topic of speciality sometime soon.

 

Dr. Malau's speech on his immediate focus is very relevant to the discussions we have had during our forum. It is good to see that coming from the top. With Dr. Malau's qualities, we should now begin to accelerate some of the good things done in the past. I think direction is very important and that is what Dr. Malau is putting out from the beginning.

 

He also talks about the Health Department and improvements needed there, the Health plans that need to be re-visited etc. I think is very impressive and I'm sure with his Public Health background he would know very well the challenges that will need to be faced in the implementation phase.

 

I read a few speeches but this one really stands out. I'm really looking forward to our people receiving better care in the future. It is not going to be an easy road. We would need to be supporting the cause and working hard together to achieving some of these things.

 

Regards

 

Sioni