People get vaccinated at a drive-through centre at Nadi International Airport in Fiji on July 20, 2021. Photo / Fiji Ministry of Health
People get vaccinated at a drive-through centre at Nadi International Airport in Fiji on July 20, 2021. Photo / Fiji Ministry of Health
ANALYSIS:
Things were looking very bad three months ago for both Papua New Guinea and Fiji. The two Pacific countries were each looking very vulnerable to the Covid Delta variant, albeit in different ways.
On July 10, PNG recorded its first official Delta case, and the nation's health professionals were soon warning the combination of very low testing rates, high percentage of positive tests and an extremely slow vaccine rollout provided a "recipe for a major spread".
Fiji was already in the thick of it at the time. After the deadly Delta strain entered the country via a quarantine breach in April, per capita infection rates became the highest in the world in the middle of the year.
By contrast, PNG is in the grips of a major wave, with less than 1 per cent of the total population fully vaccinated. PNG is trailing much of the world.
Why have two Pacific countries, which share Melanesian cultural connections, handled their vaccine rollouts so differently?
Fiji's daily infection rate today is 4 per cent of what it was at the peak, and it's falling. Less than 50 new cases are currently being reported on average each day.
In PNG, the official infection rate is now averaging just under 300 new cases per day, but this drastically understates the reality of what is happening in the country.
It's not simply a vaccine supply issue. At this stage of the global crisis, PNG, like Fiji, has received substantial vaccine deliveries - principally from Australia, New Zealand and the COVAX vaccine delivery initiative.
In fact, thousands of PNG's early deliveries went to waste because the health authorities were unable to use them. The PNG government has recently made the best of a bad situation by re-gifting 30,000 vials donated by New Zealand to Vietnam.
Our #PacificHub leader @CainTess comments on the challenges #PNG faces in its #Covid-19 vaccine rollout after having to transfer donated vaccines to Vietnam
PNG's geography does present some challenging physical barriers to distributing vaccines - its legendary mountainous terrain and the remoteness of many of its inhabitants are well known.
But companies from Digicel to South Pacific Brewery manage to penetrate the most inaccessible areas with their products despite these difficulties. And the authorities manage to deliver the vote across the nation every five years in what is one of the world's most extraordinary democratic exercises.
With its own rugged terrain and dispersed populations across multiple islands, Fiji has also faced major physical impediments to its vaccine rollout.
The major difference: leadership and belief
We get closer to the problem when we think in terms of trust, understanding and belief.
Fijians have embraced the vaccination rollout almost as one, following the guidance of their medical authorities and falling in line with the firm "no jabs, no job" policy of its Prime Minister, former military commander Frank Bainimarama.
In PNG, the term "vaccine hesitancy" understates the problem. One survey earlier this year showed worrying low willingness to take the vaccine, and another survey of university students showed a mere 6 per cent wanted it.
These dramatically contrasting pictures cannot be explained fully through differences in education standards, or the quality of medical advice and attention.
To be sure, Fiji leads PNG in these respects – Fiji has 99 per cent literacy compared to just over 63 per cent in PNG, according to the latest available figures. And while Fiji's medical system has its challenges, the decline in PNG's health services due to chronic lack of investment puts it in a very different category.
I know how quickly Papua New Guineans tap into what's happening in neighbouring Australia, too. They will have seen how the public debate here has dented confidence in the AstraZeneca brand – the mainstay of their own vaccine supply.
#PNG Opposition leader Belden Namah trying to make political mileage on Thursday from widespread vaccine hesitancy in the country, calling for the rollout of Australian-donated vaccines to be suspended until there was “scientific proof about the benefits and the effects”.
But perhaps most troubling of all is the sense that many Papua New Guineans have developed a fatalistic belief that Covid is just another health challenge to add to the litany of other serious problems facing the country, among them maternal mortality, malaria and tuberculosis.
It's almost as if they believe this is all somehow PNG's lot. But it doesn't need to be.
Ian Kemish is a former Australian high commissioner to Papua New Guinea and adjunct professor at The University of Queensland's School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry.
