Australian High Commissioner Visit PNGIMR Headquaters | PNGIMR getting ready for 40th Anniversary | PNGIMR recieves K35M for research | Professor Siba meets with IRB of UHC MC in USA | Professor Siba meets visits PNGIMR Madang | First EHP HIV/AIDS Stakeholders meeting | 18 graduate as HIV counselors | Pneumocarr workshop in Finland | This quater in Pictures | Grace attends workshop in Melbourne | Mr Tavul attends workshop in Cambodia | PNGIMR celebrates openday with DWU | PNGIMR joins DWU to celebrate open day in picture |Staff graduate from UPNG |Visitors |Staff going Finish |New Staff |Community Service

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Grace attends workshop in Melbourne
Graduate Research Officer Ms Grace Pongua reports on her trip to the Burnet Institute in Melbourne during April this year.

graduate scientific officer mrs grace pongua with the delegation from the south pacific islands who attended the workshop.graduate scientific officer mrs grace pongua with the delegation from the south pacific islands who attended the workshop.

The main objective of my visit to Burnet Institute, Melbourne was to firstly present findings from the joint IMR-Burnet research into the Supplementary Immunization Activity (SIA) that was conducted in Papua New Guinea in late 2003 to early 2005.

The project was funded by the Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative of the Global Forum on Health Research, the Burnet Institute and AusAID.

During the first week of my visit (17th April- 20th April), I attended a seminar at the Burnet Institute on local level managers in health systems development.

The aim of the seminar was to allow the health managers from the Pacific Island countries to identify some of the difficulties and challenges faced when delivering health services to difficult environments and come up with solutions to overcome these problems.
Present at the seminar were health managers from Vanuatu, Palau, Timor Leste, Samoa, Fiji and Papua New Guinea.
Representatives from donor agencies such as Ausaid and SPC were there to observe the sort of problems these health managers were facing at different levels of the health systems.

The seminar enabled me to understand how the health system of certain countries function in terms of how money from donor agencies were being used and how health services were being delivered in other parts of the Pacific countries.

I also had the chance to audit different courses on Field Methods. The seminars on field methods were basically on how to do research, the different kinds of research methods, ethics of doing research and the monitoring and evaluation of a research project.

It was sort of a refresher for me because lots of the things discussed were acquired while working in PNGIMR.

Finally, I would say it was a challenge and a milestone for me because it was my first trip overseas and also I would like to thank the PNGIMR and the Burnet Institute for making my trip possible.