Brief History of Christian Health Services PNG

Historically, the churches have always played on important role in health work in Papua New Guinea. The provision of basic health care, support and assistance was first recognised by the wives of the first missionaries in the 1870s and later by the first trained nurse from the Lutheran Red Cross Missionary in Madang in 1894.

Since then up until now, Churches through their different missions to PNG  (Anglican, Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist, Adventist and Methodist have played a leading role in the provision of health care. From the door steps of the missionary houses to the little clinics came some of the hospitals and health centres now seen in various parts of the country.

The early colonial administration encouraged this work and as early as 1920 provided “grants in aid” to assist churches to develop and expand their health services. The PNG Government has continued to provide financial support through grants and today provides almost 80-100% (in most cases) of Church health finances.

After PNG gained independence in 1975 most of the church health facilities were handed over to the national churches by the departing overseas missions and their missionaries. As this was done without proper planning, the question of sustainability and continuity of health work left behind was not seriously thought through

In order to fast-track the transition from missionary management of church health services, to a structured national setting, Christian Health Service of PNG started training Community Health Workers (CHW) to manage the curative and preventive health care at the village level. At the same time many of the middle cadre of Health Workers; nurses were trained to cover the vacancies left by the departing missionary nurses/workers.

Training of health workers throughout PNG continues to be a key focus of Christian Health Services

Summary