Mothers give birth once again at Togoba Health Centre
“It is about 8 kilometers from my village in Kameng up in the mountains to this health center,” says Maggy Joel, 22, who gave birth to a baby girl the previous night.
15 August 2022, Port Moresby – “It is about 8 kilometers from my village in Kameng up in the mountains to this health center,” says Maggy Joel, 22, who gave birth to a baby girl the previous night. “My family brought me on a makeshift stretcher to deliver my baby here in Togoba Health Centre now that it is open. It would have been very difficult for me to travel all the way to Mount Hagen,” she adds.
Maggy is among the first group of mothers who have been able to deliver their babies once again at Toboga Health Center in Western Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea (PNG). Until recently the Health Centre was not able to offer the service because it had no safe water or proper sanitation. The health Centre’s water and sanitation systems had broken down.
“For over two years, mothers could not deliver babies at the center due to fear of infection,” says Juliet Kiso, the Officer in Charge. “In fact, it was a big challenge to safely treat any patient without putting staff, patients and even the neighboring community at risk of infection with various diseases, including COVID-19 which has been a major threat for much of the past 2 years,” she adds.
The center was unable to provide safe health care because it had no safe and accessible water supply, no hand hygiene facilities at points of care or clean and working toilets for staff and patients.
The centre has now overcome the challenge, thanks to renovation work completed by the European Union-funded Klinpela Komuniti Projek, a water, sanitation and hygiene project implemented by UNICEF and partners in four PNG districts.
The labour ward at Togoba Health Centre is now back in operation and usually two babies are delivered every day at the center. Expectant mothers no longer have to travel several kilometers to give birth at the Mount Hagen Provincial Hospital in Mount Hagen – the capital of Western Highlands Province.
The labour ward, and all other sections at the Togoba Health Centre, now have safe water at all key points of care for health workers to wash their hands and clean their medical instruments as well as a shower room for mothers to wash after giving birth. It also has a flushing toilet with a handwashing station for use by the mothers.
“Before the renovation work, the staff used to go home to use a toilet because the toilets were broken down. This was time consuming and tiresome,” says Julie Benige, a Nursing Officer.
Now Health Centre medical staff can use the renovated staff toilets that includes a shower room and changing room. This has given the health workers more time to focus on treating their patients, many of whom travel long distances on foot and need to leave as early as possible to reach their distant homes before dark.
In addition, the project has constructed new separated flushing toilets with handwashing stations for the more than 60 men and women who visit the center every day. Before the new toilets, patients used to use the surrounding bushes to relief themselves because the old patients’ latrine was filled up, dirty and unusable.
The Klinpela Komuniti Projek has also supported the Togoba Health Centre by building a patients’ waiting area and by giving the entire facility a facelift with repairs and a new coat of paint.
This effort is part of a bigger four-year EU-UNICEF water, sanitation and hygiene project that has constructed, rehabilitated or renovated water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities in 36 health centers across four PNG districts of Central Bougainville (Autonomous Region of Bougainville), Goroka (Eastern Highlands), Hagen Central (Western Highlands), Nawaeb (Morobe) benefiting 36,000 patients and 7,200 mothers and their babies.
