My first visit to Papua New Guinea was in 1995 and in the years since I have developed a deep affection both for the country and its natural treasures, and for the people, who are truly the victims of bad press, for Papua New Guineans are, by-and-large among the friendliest and most genuine people I have met anywhere in the world. PNG is truly the "Land of the Unexpected", and anyone who visits here with an open-mind, warm smile and a sense of adventure cannot fail to be rewarded.
My original interest in PNG was in collecting the venoms of its dangerous snakes for other research groups, but in some of my first forays into the PNG bush I was abruptly and brutally confronted by the vastly different outcome after snake bite here, compared to back home in Australia, little more than 1.5 hours flying time to the South. In just one week outside Port Moresby 3 of the 4 people who were brought to the local health centre near where I was staying, died. Two of them were young children, one a boy of 5 who arrived deeply paralysed and unresponsive to treatment, and the other a terrified girl of 9, who clung to life all night until she finally died of airway obstruction just as dawn was breaking. The third was the young mother of 5 children, who died simply because there was no transport to take her to a bigger, better equipped hospital just two hours down the sorry excuse for a highway. Snake bite victims in PNG rarely die quick, clean deaths. Death when it comes, is usually the result of either upper airway obstruction (which leads to choking) or slow suffocation as powerful neurotoxins dismantle respiratory function.
There really is no despair greater than sitting and listening to another human being gasping for a breath that just will not come. But without even the most basic of medical equipment, most bush health centres simply lack the capacity to cope with airway emergencies.
This huge contrast between the consequences of snake bite in Australia and PNG really came as a huge wake-up call to me. Having been the victim of my own carelessness on five occasions when I was working with venomous snakes back home, and having been the recipient of world-class medical care that saw me on feet again with negligible consequences, it shocked me enormously to realise that in a country so close to Australia, and so closely linked to us by history, the results of snake bite could be so dramatically different.
My experience in that small health centre, changed the whole way I look at life, and how I set my priorities. It started me on a path that has taken me back to University to gain skills and qualifications that I had never thought I might need. And it has seen me walk away from one direction in life to take up a cause that truly needs all the attention we can possibly give it. But most of all it has given me a chance to reach out and change the lives of a great many people, and to help give them back to their families, and to healthy, productive lives.
