Papua New Guinea Highlands Research Articles

Improving paediatric and neonatal care in rural district hospitals in the highlands of Papua New Guinea: a quality improvement approach

Background:In developing countries such as Papua New Guinea (PNG), district hospitals play a vital role in clinical care, training health-care workers, implementing immunization and other public health programmes and providing necessary data on disease burdens and outcomes. Pneumonia and neonatal conditions are a major cause of child admission and death in hospitals throughout PNG. Oxygen therapy is an essential component of the management of pneumonia and neonatal conditions, but facilities for oxygen and care of the sick newborn are often inadequate, especially in district hospitals. Improving this area may be a vehicle for improving overall quality of care.Method:A qualitative study of five rural district hospitals in the highlands provinces of Papua New Guinea was undertaken. A structured survey instrument was used by a paediatrician and a biomedical technician to assess the quality of paediatric care, the case-mix and outcomes, resources for delivery of good-quality care for children with pneumonia and neonatal illnesses, existing oxygen systems and equipment, drugs and consumables, infection-control facilities and the reliability of the electricity supply to each hospital. A floor plan was drawn up for the installation of the oxygen concentrators and a plan for improving care of sick neonates, and a process of addressing other priorities was begun.Results:In remote parts of PNG, many district hospitals are run by under-resourced non-government organizations. Most hospitals had general wards in which both adults and children were managed together. Paediatric case-loads ranged between 232 and 840 patients per year with overall case-fatality rates (CFR) of 3–6% and up to 15% among sick neonates. Pneumonia accounts for 28–37% of admissions with a CFR of up to 8%. There were no supervisory visits by paediatricians, and little or no continuing professional development of staff. Essential drugs were mostly available, but basic equipment for the care of sick neonates was often absent or incomplete. Infection control measures were inadequate in most hospitals. Cylinders were the major source of oxygen for the district hospitals, and logistical problems and large indirect costs meant that oxygen was under-utilized. There were multiple electricity interruptions, but hospitals had back-up generators to enable the use of oxygen concentrators. After 6 months in each of the five hospitals, high-dependency care areas were planned, oxygen concentrators installed, staff trained in their use, and a plan was set out for improving neonatal care.Interpretation:If MGD-4 targets for child health are to be met, reducing neonatal mortality and deaths from pneumonia will have to include better quality services in district hospitals. Establishing better oxygen supplies with a systems approach can be a vehicle for addressing other areas of quality and safety in district hospitals.

Addressing the Challenges of Production Forecasting in the Remote Highlands of Papua New Guinea

Summary Operational conditions in the remote highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG) bring a multitude of challenges, including complex geology, steep jungle terrain, extreme rainfall, a sensitive ecosystem, a variety of landowner cultures, ageing facilities, mature reservoirs, and fraught logistics. These factors conspire to increase the complexity of production forecasting well beyond just reservoir performance. After missing production targets for a number of years, a significant improvement in forecasting was needed to fully capture the uncertainties, both identified and unforeseen. A probabilistic forecasting tool by use of Monte Carlo simulation has been developed, which incorporates assessments of all major variables and takes account of historical performance and system changes. Successful implementation has resulted in the generation of realistic targets that have been met within 4% for 4 years. Further, a clearer understanding of potential threats and opportunities, combined with their impact on production, has been achieved. These results have delivered material benefits to business planning, decision making, and company reputation. Data to be presented on the forecasting tool will describe the quantification of uncertainty for each major variable, including reservoir and facility performance, incremental production opportunities, project schedules, and major unplanned downtime. This approach could be applicable to exploration and production companies operating in difficult conditions worldwide, in areas where unreliable production targets have a major business impact. It is flexible enough for both short- and long-term forecasts, tracking and reporting, and adaptation to new or changed operating conditions.

Challenges with tracing the fate and speciation of mine-derived metals in turbid river systems: implications for bioavailability

The fast-flowing and highly turbid Lagaip River (0.5-10 g/L suspended solids) in the central highlands of Papua New Guinea receives mine-derived metal inputs in both dissolved and particulate forms. Nearest the mine, metal concentrations in suspended solids were 360, 9, 90, 740 and 1,300 mg/kg for As, Cd, Cu, Pb and Zn, while dissolved concentrations were 2.7, 0.6, 3.1, 0.1 and 25 μg/L, respectively. This creates a significant metal exposure source for organisms nearer the mine. However, because the Lagaip River is diluted by a large number of tributaries, the extent to which mine-derived metals may affect biota in the lower catchments is uncertain. To improve our understanding of the forms of potentially bioavailable metals entering the lower river system, we studied the partitioning and speciation of metals within the Lagaip River system. Dissolved and particulate metal concentrations decreased rapidly downstream of the mine due to dilution from tributaries. As a portion of the particulate metal concentrations, the more labile dilute acid-extractable forms typically comprised 10-30% for As and Pb, 50-75% for Cu and Zn, and 50-100% for Cd. Only dissolved Cd, Cu and Zn remained elevated relative to the non-mine-impacted tributaries (<0.03, 0.5 and 0.3 μg/L), but the concentrations did not appreciably change with increasing dilution downriver. This indicated that release of Cd, Cu and Zn was likely occurring from the more labile metal phases of the mine-derived particulates. Chelex-labile metal analyses and speciation modelling indicated that dissolved copper and lead were largely non-labile and likely complexed by naturally occurring organic ligands, while dissolved cadmium and zinc were predominantly present in labile forms. The study confirmed that mine-derived particulates may represent a significant source of dissolved metals in the lower river system; however, comparison with water quality guidelines indicates the low concentrations would not adversely affect aquatic life.

Prions and the like

Fatal Flaws by Jay Ingram, the Canadian author, writer and broadcaster, is the latest popular science book on transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. Unlike previous books—such as Deadly feasts by Richard Rhodes, The pathological protein by Philip Yam, Comment les vaches sont devenues folles by Maxime Schwartz, The family that couldn’t sleep by Daniel Max and The collectors of lost souls by Warwick Anderson— Fatal Flaws is able to draw on the emerging mechanistic links between transmissible spongiform encephalopathies and common human neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Kuru came to the attention of western medicine in 1957, when Carleton Gajdusek and Vincent Zigas described a progressive cerebellar disorder with ataxia and tremor in a population of Fore natives of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The patients did not develop fever and there were no signs of inflammation or antibody production. The duration of disease was 7–9 months, ending in death. Zigas, who had been a medical officer in Papua New Guinea since 1949, brought kuru to the attention of the outside world. Gajdusek, an American national who was born in 1923 and died in 2008, was in search of an important scientific problem. At the time, he was a visiting scientist with the immunologist Frank Macfarlane Burnet at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, where he had worked since 1954. As mentioned by Ingram, in a draft letter of April 1957, Macfarlane Burnet described Gajdusek thus: ‘My own summing up was that he had an intelligence quotient up in the 180s and the emotional immaturity of a 15-year-old. He is quite maniacally energetic when his enthusiasm is roused, and can inspire enthusiasm in his technical assistants. He is completely self-centred, thick-skinned, and inconsiderate but equally won’t …

From Modern Production to Imagined Primitive: The Social World of Coffee from Papua New Guinea by Paige West (review)

Reviewed by: From Modern Production to Imagined Primitive: The Social World of Coffee from Papua New Guinea by Paige West Larry Lake From Modern Production to Imagined Primitive: The Social World of Coffee from Papua New Guinea, by Paige West. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012. ISBN 978-0-8223-5150-4; xvii + 255 pages, photographs, tables, notes, references, index. Paper, US$25.95. In this book, anthropologist Paige West leads us on a global journey from a small Gimi-speaking village in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, through processing plants in Goroka, to the port of Lae, and ultimately to coffeehouses in New York, Hamburg, Brisbane, and Sydney, providing a formidable discussion of insights and ethnographic observations of the Papua New Guinea coffee industry and its place in the larger world of global commerce. In doing so, West helps us see the unexpected complexity of all aspects of the coffee industry: production, exporting, marketing, and consumption. This book is a rich blend of careful theoretical discussion, academically sound analyses, informal personal reflections on incidents in fieldwork, and the resulting relationships the ethnographer develops. West foregrounds the discussion that constitutes the primary focus of each chapter and then reviews it at the end. At first this rhetorical approach might seem too elementary for such a project—too [End Page 197] much like a five-paragraph essay by a first-year writer—but readers will soon appreciate it for the guidance it gives. So much is happening in this book at so many levels that it is essential to have a quick-witted and patient guide to tell us what we are now seeing. West is that guide. West uses her years of research and her connections with people in various areas of the coffee industry to help us see her perspectives on many aspects of that industry. In all cases, she cleverly complicates the issues we might otherwise imagine to be fairly simple: certification schemes are shown to be more problematic than some realize, and much of coffee advertising relies on "fantasy formation" about "chiseled warriors in Bird of Paradise headdresses" (39) that suggests an "enforced subsistence primitivism" (60). "These chronotopic fantasies," she writes, "are grafted onto coffee from Papua New Guinea by . . . people and organizations engaged in specialty marketing. The images and fantasies . . . also endure in, and are perpetuated by, coffee marketing and certification, through the physical and ideological layout of coffee shops across the world, through the discursive production of 'middlemen' who are out to rob authentic natives of their income, and in the rhetoric about saving the lifestyles of indigenous peoples living in 'stone age' conditions through the helping hand of capitalism (even though it is capital's evils that are forcing the inevitable march towards modernity)" (64). Thus, West critiques the double-edged sword of marketing strategies that stereotype Papua New Guinea and its coffee producers as exotic, primitive, and impoverished, and she helps us see the much more nuanced realities of the cultures and economics involved. In the section "Village Coffee," West contrasts coffee as a crop with the ubiquitous sweet potato of the Highlands. She shows how sweet potatoes are intertwined with Gimi notions of marriage and of life itself, whereas coffee, much more recently introduced, has no such deep connections to daily life: "Coffee's planting and then use (as it has no use value for Gimi) [who do not drink coffee] do not work to make a woman part of her husband's family in the same way as sweet potato cultivation does. Additionally, with sweet potato the (re)productive capacity was female. Now men take part in (re)productive capacity through coffee production" (121-122). A reader expecting a distant and mechanical discussion of the processes of coffee production and of the social forces behind the global economy will be surprised: like any good ethnography, this book is as much about people as it is about social and economic theories and conceptual frameworks. Within the first few pages we learn about West's friendship with a Gimi family in Papua New Guinea whose daughter Betsy died of malaria, and we soon hear about West's grandmother and her coffee habits...

Fenced In: Intimacy and Mobility in Highlands Papua New Guinea

AbstractThis paper is organised around the analysis of an ‘event’; a truck trip from Kwima, a Maring speaking settlement in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea, to Banz in the Wahgi Valley and an evening spent on the road. The event forms a standpoint from which to assess the impact of the decline of civic space, and faltering legacy of colonial governmentality, in the Jimi since 1980. I describe the emergence of new forms of mobility based around the nexus between local forms of business and trucks. In particular I focus on new and anxious forms of masculine inside relationships, understood as a transformation of a habitus of intimacy, round which such mobility is built. I argue that this transformation should be understood in terms of the dialectical relationship between business as an expansive profit oriented project on the one hand, and its anchoring in clan defined space on the other. At the same time the event provides a vantage point to reflect on the nature of long‐term fieldwork, the methodological significance of the subjectivity of the ethnographer, and the nature of ethnographic error.

An ethnobotanical survey of medicinal plants used in the eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea

BackgroundThe Eastern Highlands area of Papua New Guinea (PNG) has a rich tradition of medicinal plant use. However, rapid modernization is resulting in the loss of independent language traditions and consequently a loss of individuals knowledgeable in medicinal plant use. This report represents a program to document and preserve traditional knowledge concerning medicinal plant use in PNG. This report documents and compares traditional plant use in the Eastern Highlands districts of Unggai-Bena, Okapa, and Obura-Wonenara, and puts these new records in context of previously documented PNG medicinal plant use.MethodsThis manuscript is an annotated combination of Traditional Medicines survey reports generated by UPNG trainees using a survey questionnaire titled “Information sheet on traditional herbal reparations and medicinal plants of PNG”. The Traditional Medicines survey project is supported by WHO, US NIH and PNG governmental health care initiatives and funding.ResultsOverall, after “poisoning” (synonymous with “magic”) the most commonly recorded ailments addressed by medicinal plant use were pain, gynecological disease, gastrointestinal maladies, anemia or malnutrition and malaria. However, the recorded indications for plant use varied widely amongst the different survey locations. Unlike many areas of PNG, mixing of ingredients was the most common mode of preparation recorded, except for two areas where the consumption of fresh plant material was more common. Throughout the Eastern Highlands oral administration was most common, with topical application second. Overall, leaves were most commonly used in the preparations of the healers interviewed, followed by bark and stems. Several new medicinal uses of plants were also documented.ConclusionsCollaboration between the WHO, UPNG and the PNG Department of Health initiated Traditional Medicine survey program in order to preserve traditional knowledge concerning medicinal plant use in PNG. This effort promotes integration of effective and accessible traditional practices with Western protocols. The Traditional Medicine surveys are particularly important because, in the absence of the clinical validation, the documentation of the consistent use of a given plant for specific indication by a large number of herbalists, across a wide range of ethnic traditions, maybe considered as a positive criterion for the promulgation of said use amongst PNG’s recently formed traditional healer associations.

Melanesia’s violent environments: Towards a political ecology of conflict in the western Pacific

This paper draws upon Michael Watts’s work on governable spaces and “economies of violence” in the Niger Delta (2004a,b,c) and Colin Filer’s concept of the “ideology of landownership” in Papua New Guinea (1997) to explore how resource capitalism has been at the heart of violent conflict in post-colonial Melanesia. This schema of the political ecology of violence is elucidated with reference to three governable spaces – landownership, indigeneity, and nationalism; four different resource–industrial complexes – mining, oil and gas, logging, and oil palm; and the region’s three most serious conflicts to date – the Bougainville conflict, the Solomon Islands ‘ethnic tension’, and on-going violence in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, particularly in Enga and Southern Highlands provinces. It is argued that in each of these places the story of violent conflict is ineluctably one of resource capitalism and its engagement with local socio-political contexts. In sharp contrast to the resource determinism, state-centrism and ahistoricism of much of the ‘resource conflict’ literature, attention to governmentality and scale highlights the highly contextual and contingent nature of resource-related violence in Melanesia. The diverse experiences of different regulatory approaches to the encounters between resource complexes and governable spaces across time and space are also examined, giving rise to policy implications for governing resource conflict in Melanesia.

Gifts of grief: performative ethnography and the revelatory potential of emotion

After participation in the funeral of a beloved friend in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea, I was drawn to contemplate the revelatory potential of emotions such as grief. With reference to literature on the anthropology of emotions and the concept of empathy, I consider the relationship between ethnographic knowledge and deep emotional responses in the context of fieldwork. I argue that moments of intense emotional engagement, which many researchers record as having experienced during fieldwork, have the potential to lead to rich ethnographic understanding, particularly when such moments productively draw us into participatory cultural performances that help mediate the conceptual divide between meaning and feeling, observer and observed.

Out of Place: Madness in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea (review)

Reviewed by: Out of Place: Madness in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea Barbara Andersen Out of Place: Madness in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, by Michael Goddard. Social Identities 6. New York: Berghahn Books, 2011. ISBN cloth, 978-0-85745-094-4; xiv + 173 pages, preface, acknowledgments, map, appendixes, references, index. Cloth, US$70.00. This unique exploration of madness in Papua New Guinea stands out for several reasons. While its central insight is not surprising—that in the mid-1980s the Kakoli people of the Upper Kaugel Valley lacked a concept of "mental illness" and, on the rare occasions when they used psychiatric services, saw them chiefly as a means of restraining destructive or violent madpeople—the data collected by Michael Goddard is both fascinating and sensitively presented. Though framed by the author as an anthropological critique of the premises and practice of transcultural psychiatry, I would suggest that this book's strongest feature is its careful rendering of the unknowns of ethnographic fieldwork—those situations and circumstances in which the gap between ways of being in the world is so profound as to thwart efforts at interpretation. Having had a quarter century to reevaluate these materials (the book is based on his PhD thesis), the author remains uncertain of what, if anything, precipitated the madness of his informants. This radical uncertainty is an epistemologically positive posture in an increasingly "applied" scholarly context in which cultural explanations for disorder are both ready-to-hand and too often essentially vacant. In his introduction, Goddard notes that the people among whom he lived in 1985-1986 found his research topic puzzling. For the Kakoli, there was nothing to learn about the mad. Not only were their problems nonmental in nature, they appeared to lack any knowable cause that could be generalized across cases. The madpeople known to the Kakoli were so different from one another that they did not comprise a social or natural "type." Though all were described as kekelepa— an Umbu Ungu term Goddard translates roughly as "leaving a group or place" (70)—so were the intoxicated, the estranged, and the disobedient. To refurbish a phrase from Michel Foucault on homosexuality, kekelepa people were not a species. To the extent that they permit explanation, kekelepa episodes are for Goddard "part of the dialectics of Kakoli sociality" (6), collectively constructed "exercise[s] in moral iconography" (3) rather than forms of individual pathology or cultural disorder. Chapter 1 outlines the history of psychiatry in Papua New Guinea, from early twentieth century concerns [End Page 460] about mentally deranged "natives" going "amok," to the post-World War II shift toward institutional confinement, tranquilizing drugs, and electroshock therapy, to the "community-based care" framework of the ethnographic present. The history is much enriched by personal interviews with Dr B G Burton-Bradley, head of Papua New Guinea's mental health services under Australian rule, and Dr Wilfred Moi, the assistant secretary for mental health at the time of Goddard's fieldwork. Chapter 2 explores the basic contradiction belying this narrative of progress: despite changes in professional ideology and official policy, Goddard argues, psychiatric service provision has remained mostly unchanged since the 1960s. At the level of practice, psychiatry in Papua New Guinea is an apparatus of constraint and control, and patients usually have considerably more contact with law enforcement officers than with mental health professionals. In this context, "culturally sensitive" psychiatry does little more than provide an ideological justification for what is essentially incarceration—it is a "paper concept" (60) with no relevance for patients and their families or for health workers, whose foremost concern is controlling patients' extreme behaviors. Goddard illustrates this point with seven case studies from the 1970s and 1980s of patients from the Kaugel Valley who received psychiatric treatment at hospitals in Mt Hagen, Mendi, and Goroka. In all cases, patients were hospitalized after acts of violence or property damage (or, in the case of one female patient, mood swings and aggression combined with promiscuity), and cultural factors were completely absent from both diagnostic and therapeutic efforts. Chapter 3 describes the "ambivalent" use of psychiatric services by the Kakoli despite their non-subscription to, and lack of...

Epidemiology of malaria in the Papua New Guinean highlands

To conduct an in-depth investigation of the epidemiology of malaria in the Papua New Guinea (PNG) highlands and provide a basis for evidence-based planning and monitoring of intensified malaria control activities. Between December 2000 and July 2005, 153 household-based, rapid malaria population surveys were conducted in 112 villages throughout the central PNG highlands. The presence of malaria infections was determined by light microscopy and risk factors assessed using a structured questionnaire.The combined dataset from all individually published surveys was reanalysed. The prevalence of malaria infections in the different surveys ranged from 0.0% to 41.8%(median 4.3%) in non-epidemic surveys and 6.6% to 63.2% (median 21.2%, P < 0.001) during epidemics. Plasmodium falciparum was the predominant infection below 1400 m and during epidemics, Plasmodium vivax at altitudes >1600 m. Outside epidemics, prevalence decreased significantly with altitude, was reduced in people using bed nets [odds ratio (OR) = 0.8, P < 0.001] but increased in those sleeping in garden houses (OR = 1.34, P < 0.001) and travelling to highly endemic lowlands (OR = 1.80, P < 0.001). Below 1400 m, malaria was a significant source of febrile illness. At higher altitudes, malaria was only a significant source of febrile illness during epidemic outbreaks, but asymptomatic malaria infections were common in non-epidemic times. Malaria is once again endemic throughout the PNG highlands in areas below 1400–1500 m of altitude with a significant risk of seasonal malaria outbreaks in most area between 1400–1650 m. Ongoing control efforts are likely to result in a substantial reduction in malaria transmission and may even result in local elimination of malaria in higher lying areas.

Out of Place: Madness in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea by Michael Goddard

Out of Place: Madness in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea by <i>Michael Goddard</i>

Helminths from Abeomelomys sevia (Rodentia: Muridae) with the Description of a New Species of Montistrongylus (Nematoda: Heligmonellidae) from Papua New Guinea

Abstract A new species, Montistrongylus karungi (Heligmonellidae) was collected from the digestive tracts of 6 Abeomelomys sevia (Rodentia: Muridae: Anisomyini) from localities in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The new species differs from both its congeners in having 13–18 ridges in the synlophe. Larval Ophidascaris (Ascarididae), Heterakis sp. (Heterakidae), and Odilia mackerrasae (Heligmonellidae) were each recovered from a single host. The phylogenetic relationships of Abeomelomys within the Anisomyini are as yet unresolved, and there is insufficient information about the helminth assemblages of the ansomyin genera, but there are similarities in ecology and distribution of the hosts of the 3 species of Montistrongylus. Therefore it is unclear as to whether coevolution, host switching, or both have been influential in speciation.

Sung Tales from the Papua New Guinea Highlands: Studies in Form, Meaning, and Sociocultural Context ed. by Alan Rumsey, Don Niles (review)

Reviewed by: Sung Tales from the Papua New Guinea Highlands: Studies in Form, Meaning, and Sociocultural Context ed. by Alan Rumsey, Don Niles Courtney Handman Sung Tales from the Papua New Guinea Highlands: Studies in Form, Meaning, and Sociocultural Context. Edited by Alan Rumsey and Don Niles. Canberra: ANU E Press, 2011. Pp. xvi + 330. $24.95 (paper). Although the highlands of Papua New Guinea only became the subject of anthropological research in the 1930s, researchers have been thick on the ground ever since and the amount of information on the communities in this region is exceptional. But even with all of this work, highlands research has suffered from a number of gaps, including a glaring shortage of linguistic anthropological work and relatively few comparative projects that examine regional practices across ethnolinguistic boundaries. The present volume helps to fill in both of these gaps with a series of articles examining the poetics and musicality of the complex tales chanted or sung by master storyteller bards. The contributions in this edited volume all focus on this extraordinary performance genre in which mostly male bards extemporaneously compose songs that relate traditional lore. The practice is, or was, an important performance genre among Duna (also known as Yuna), Huli, Enga, Ipili, Angal, Ku Waru, and Melpa speakers, to list only those ethnolinguistic groups represented by articles in this volume. The contexts of performance varied, but in many cases male bards performed sung tales in men’s houses to an audience that sometimes interjected standard exclamations and encouragements. The song topics vary across ethnolinguistic groups, from the interactions between “sky people” and the first humans to the courtship of magical women. The songs are performed by the composer-bard without instrumentation to tunes that follow a standard form (for example, in the Duna-Yuna case, each line has two parts, first descending several notes and then staying on a single note for the rest of the line). The volume contains thirteen chapters, including an introduction by the editors framing the project as a whole. As the editors note, there has been very little written about this performance genre even though it is practiced across the Highlands region and even though the Highlands region is extremely well studied in other respects. Given this lack, the volume as a whole makes an important contribution by documenting and analyzing examples of these tales from seven different ethnolinguistic groups. One of the most important concepts developed throughout many of the chapters is “parallelism” as [End Page 196] defined by Roman Jakobson. Jakobson discussed parallelism—what Rumsey pithily calls “repetition with variation” (p. 252)—as a primary form of poetic structure. The segmentation of text into lines and the overlapping of repeating parallel elements within and across lines are examined in many of these chapters as the key feature of song composition (see especially chapters 1, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 11). Of particular note are the chapters that focus on the ways in which parallelisms are constructed across linguistic and musical forms (chapters 4, 8, and 11). In addition to this focus on poetic form, the chapters in the volume present structural and formal analyses using a number of methodologies from linguistics and ethnomusicology. Chapters by Kenny Yuwi Kendoli, Kirtsy Gillespie and Lila San Roque, and Michael Sollis discuss Duna-Yuna versions of sung texts from a number of different angles. Kendoli, a Yuna man whose interview is transcribed here, provides an insider’s account of the evaluative criteria audience members and bards use to judge performances, among other topics. Gillespie and San Roque provide a formal analysis of the structure of a song in both linguistic and musicological terms. Sollis discusses the forms of parallelism in Duna sung tales. There are two chapters about sung tales in Huli; Gabe C. J. Lomas focuses on forms of textual and linguistic cohesion across clauses and sentences, and Jacqueline Pugh-Kitingan analyzes the ways in which melody distorts linguistic tone in sung performances. Three chapters focus on Enga and Ipili sung tales. Philip Gibbs moves away from structural considerations to examine how bards evoke their imagined worlds for their audiences through metaphorical speech. Terrance Borchard’s contribution to the chapter...

Respiratory viral pathogens associated with lower respiratory tract disease among young children in the highlands of Papua New Guinea

BackgroundAcute lower respiratory tract infections (ALRI) commonly result in fatal outcomes in the young children of Papua New Guinea (PNG). However, comprehensive studies of the viral aetiology of ALRI have not been conducted in PNG for almost 30 years. ObjectivesTo determine the viruses associated with ALRI among children living in the PNG highlands using sensitive molecular detection techniques. Study designPernasal swabs were collected routinely between 1 week and 18 months of age and also during episodes of ALRI, as part of a neonatal pneumococcal conjugate vaccine trial. A tandem multiplex real-time PCR assay was used to test for a comprehensive range of respiratory viruses in samples collected from 221 young children. Picornavirus typing was supported by DNA sequence analysis. ResultsRecognized pathogenic respiratory viruses were detected in 198/273 (73%) samples collected from children with no evidence of ALRI and 69/80 (86%) samples collected during ALRI episodes. Human rhinoviruses (HRV) species A, B and C were detected in 152 (56%) samples from non-ALRI children and 50 (63%) samples collected during ALRI episodes. Partial structural region sequences for two new species C rhinoviruses were added to the GenBank database. ALRI was associated with detection of adenovirus species B (p<0.01) or C (p<0.05), influenza A (p<0.0001) or respiratory syncytial virus (p<0.0001). Multiple viruses were detected more often during ALRI episodes (49%) than when children displayed no symptoms of ALRI (18%) (p<0.0001). ConclusionsThe burden of infection with respiratory viruses remains significant in young children living in the PNG highlands.

Commentary: Epidemiology, iodine deficiency and the power of multidisciplinary sufficiency

It is pleasing to see this article being accorded ‘classic’ status. I am also glad to be able to offer comment on it since, by coincidence, I was ‘on the sidelines’ during the development of several stages of what became a multidisciplinary research-and-intervention odyssey, spanning the 1960s to the 1980s. Around 1970, Basil Hetzel, Foundation Professor of Social and Preventive Medicine at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia—and supervisor of my (unrelated) PhD—saw clearly the need and opportunity to pursue a programme of research for which this classic article is the prime foundation. The programme sought, via epidemiological research and then animal experimental studies, a fuller understanding of the developmental and health consequences of lifelong iodine deficiency. Whereas goitre (sometimes associated with cretinism) had been known to medicine in Europe and China for many centuries, its usual causation by micronutrient deficiency was not understood and neither was its linkage with a wider range of disabilities. Hence the importance of research to achieve, first, the elaboration of the full spectrum of iodine deficiency disorders (IDDs), and, second, the mobilization of international agency support for large-scale population interventions and evaluations. Basil Hetzel was Professor of Medicine during my undergraduate clinical years (1964–66) at the University of Adelaide. I knew nothing, then, of his nascent interest in the problem of iodine deficiency and goitre in the Papua New Guinea (PNG) highlands. In describing the source of his interest, he has noted in his autobiographical book, Chance and Commitment: Memoirs of a Medical Scientist (2005), the role of serendipity in one’s research life—in this case, his being asked to review a journal paper, in 1963, on an exploratory study of goitre prevention in PNG. During my first 2 years in the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at Monash University, there were occasional frissons of excitement relating to the ongoing randomized controlled trial of cretinism prevention in newborns in a sample of villages in the PNG highlands. The intervention, in 1966, entailed intramuscular injection of reproductive-aged, alternate, women with iodized oil or saline. Follow-up of pregnancy outcome occurred over the next 3 years, via copious boot-leather epidemiology in the mountainous PNG highlands. This classically experimental study was a relatively novel epidemiological research design in the late 1960s—and especially so for non-communicable disease outcomes. (Further, of course, it was carried out at a time when the process of research ethical review was a much lesser source of delay and frustration than is now the case.) Interestingly, at that time, the concepts and terminology of epidemiological research, especially for non-communicable diseases, were in a rather intuitive and unsystematized state. The leading epidemiology textbook of the day, by McMahon and Pugh, did not mention the actual word ‘confounding’. (When I arrived in 1972 at the highly regarded Department of Epidemiology, University of North Carolina, the senior academics there referred to case– control studies as ‘association studies’). Hetzel was fortunate to have able and energetic field-working colleagues, well-attuned to tramping around the PNG highlands—Drs Ian Buttfield and, especially, Peter Pharoah. The support from the PNG Department of Public Health was also invaluable. Meanwhile, back in Australia, the other side of the ‘iodine coin’ was causing public health concern. Tasmania, with its long-standing problem of iodine deficiency and adult goitre, had introduced iodine-supplemented bread in 1966. At that same time, coincidentally, iodine-based sterilizers (iodophors) were introduced into the dairy industry to ensure a safe milk supply. This became a second, unintended, source of iodine supplementation in the diet. A subsequent rise in thyrotoxicosis occurred due to over-exposure to supplementary iodine and, hence, overactive thyroid glands. Hetzel was called in as an advisor. Here was further confirmation of a central role for dietary iodine imbalance as a source of various human health disorders. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association

Letter from the President of the Wenner-Gren Foundation

Next article FreeLetterLetter from the President of the Wenner-Gren FoundationLeslie C. AielloLeslie C. AielloPresident, Wenner-Gren Foundation, and. Wenner-Gren Symposium Series Editor Search for more articles by this author Original articleOccupying Spaces Created by Conflict: Anthropologists, Development NGOs, Responsible Investment, and Mining: with CA comment by Stuart KirschPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreWe apologize to Dr. Martha Macintyre (University of Melbourne) regarding a recent article in the Wenner-Gren Symposium Supplement 3, included with the April 2011 issue of Current Anthropology, that examined the role of anthropologists and other actors in the conflicts between indigenous Ipili and the Porgera Joint Venture gold mine in the highlands of Papua New Guinea (Coumans 2011). The article included errors about the work of Dr. Macintyre in relation to those conflicts.It is appropriate to note that Dr. Macintyre has written extensively on questions of human rights in Papua New Guinea, is the past president of the Australian Anthropology Society, and is the current editor of its journal, The Australian Journal of Anthropology. It is also appropriate to note that Dr. Macintyre has informed us that she acted in full compliance with ethical and professional standards in all her work, including her work in relation to Porgera. Any suggestion to the contrary was not the view of Current Anthropology.Literature CitedCoumans, Catherine. 2011. Occupying spaces created by conflict: anthropologists, development NGOs, responsible investment, and mining. Current Anthropology 52(suppl. 3):S29–S43.First citation in articleLinkGoogle Scholar Next article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Current Anthropology Volume 53, Number S5April 2012The Biological Anthropology of Living Human Populations: World Histories, National Styles, and International Networks Sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/663289 Views: 217Total views on this site © 2011 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.Related articlesOccupying Spaces Created by Conflict: Anthropologists, Development NGOs, Responsible Investment, and Mining: with CA comment by Stuart Kirsch17 Jul 2015Current Anthropology

Goddard, Michael: Out of Place. Madness in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea

Goddard, Michael: Out of Place. Madness in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea

The Market Development Project: A case of government failure?

The Market Development Project (MDP) was initiated by the Fresh Produce Development Company (FPDA) of Papua New Guinea (PNG) in 2006. The project involved FPDA acting as a wholesaler, buying fresh produce from farmers in the PNG Highlands and delivering it to supermarkets in Port Moresby and to a mining town, Tabubil, in the Western Province. In 2010 a review was undertaken to assess MDP.s performance over the four years it had been in operation: what it had achieved and what it had not; how cost effective it was; whether and how it could have been done better; and whether a government agency should be involved in a seemingly private wholesaling business. The MDP was set up to link farmers to markets. It aimed to provide farmers with secure markets and stable prices; generate market information which the agency could use to develop policies and strategies; provide a learning ground to educate farmers and the staff to become commercial and market-oriented; and encourage farmers to save money through the establishment of bank accounts. The study showed that some of the objectives have been achieved, for example, gaining practical experience in marketing, building capacities of famers and staff, establishing bank accounts and encouraging savings for some farmers. However, these achievements were not significant relative to the time and substantial resources that had been invested in it. More importantly, it failed to make significant inroads into addressing known supply chain issues of poor transport, poor post-harvest handling, and inconsistent supply. Our findings suggest that more effort should have been given to staff and farmers. training, gathering information on costs of production and marketing and identifying and addressing supply chain issues. In addition, a workable monitoring and evaluation framework should have been put in place so that problems and deficiencies in the design and operation of MDP, most notably its pricing structure and quality control measures, could be identified and rectified as soon as they occurred. The case of MDP demonstrates clearly that administered pricing (as is MDP pricing) is no substitute for the free play of market forces and farmers. interests can be better served by government acting as a facilitator, rather than as an interventionist.

Letter from the President of the Wenner-Gren Foundation

Previous article FreeLetterLetter from the President of the Wenner-Gren FoundationLeslie C. AielloLeslie C. AielloPresident, Wenner-Gren Foundation, and. Wenner-Gren Symposium Series Editor Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreWe apologize to Dr. Martha Macintyre (University of Melbourne) regarding a recent article in the Wenner-Gren Symposium Supplement 3, included with the April 2011 issue of Current Anthropology, that examined the role of anthropologists and other actors in the conflicts between indigenous Ipili and the Porgera Joint Venture gold mine in the highlands of Papua New Guinea (Coumans 2011). The article included errors about the work of Dr. Macintyre in relation to those conflicts.It is appropriate to note that Dr. Macintyre has written extensively on questions of human rights in Papua New Guinea, is the past president of the Australian Anthropology Society, and is the current editor of its journal, The Australian Journal of Anthropology. It is also appropriate to note that Dr. Macintyre has informed us that she acted in full compliance with ethical and professional standards in all her work, including her work in relation to Porgera. Any suggestion to the contrary was not the view of Current Anthropology.Literature CitedCoumans, Catherine. 2011. Occupying spaces created by conflict: anthropologists, development NGOs, responsible investment, and mining. Current Anthropology 52(suppl. 3):S29–S43.First citation in articleLinkGoogle Scholar Previous article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Current Anthropology Volume 52, Number 6December 2011 Sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/663819 Views: 210Total views on this site Citations: 3Citations are reported from Crossref © 2011 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:John Burton Agency and the « Avatar » narrative at the Porgera gold mine, Papua New Guinea, Journal de la société des océanistes , no.138-139138-139 (Dec 2014): 37–52.https://doi.org/10.4000/jso.7118 Afterword, (Jan 2014): 208–213.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822377399-006 Bibliography, (Jan 2014): 215–236.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822377399-007