Papua New Guinea joins the Asia Pacific Malaria Elimination Network (APMEN)
APMEN brings together 18 countries in the Asia Pacific region that have adopted a national or sub-national goal for malaria elimination and connects them with a broad range of regional and global malaria partners to develop best practices in a united drive towards regional elimination.
PNG has the highest number of confirmed cases in the Western Pacific region, with over 1.1 million confirmed cases and 307 deaths in 2013, according to the World Health Organization.
National Department of Health (NDoH) Secretary, Pascoe Kase, said the official partnership with APMEN had been a priority for quite some time, and he was pleased to see those collaboration come to fruition.
“The PNG NDoH sees the partnership with APMEN as an avenue to develop technical knowledge and expertise to deal with the challenges of pre-elimination and, then elimination of malaria,” Mr Kase has announced recently.
“In return, PNG has in-depth experience and knowledge of working with the private sector for elimination in some of our provinces and this information could be useful to the country partners of APMEN,” he said.
Eliminating malaria was one of the 2015 Millennium Development Goals for PNG, which seek to have malaria under control by 2015 and reverse the incidence of malaria by 2020.
PNG’s new membership to the regional network provides the opportunity to share new insights and challenges to working towards malaria elimination with other APMEN country partners.
APMEN also hoped the partnership with PNG would help build new relationships and strengthen existing ones with groups such as Rotary against Malaria, the PNG Institute of Medical Research, Medicines for Malaria Venture and the PNG Industry Malaria Initiative.
Further information on APMEN can be obtained from www.apmen.org
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