The absorption of future population growth is one of the biggest challenges facing Papua New Guinea. Even if the fertility targets of the 1991 National Population Policy had been met, a huge increase in school places, jobs and health services would have been required. Since fertility appears not to have declined, the need for investment in social infrastructure has become even more urgent. Chri...

This report presents the case of a middle-aged Torres Strait Islander male with HIV who contracted Plasmodium vivax malaria in Papua New Guinea. His presentation included clinical and radiological features of pneumonia and he required inpatient treatment for 13 days. This study reviews the literature concerning co-infection with HIV and malaria, which is an uncommon combination in Australia, di...

1 Instituto Clodomiro Picado, Facultad de Microbiología, Universidad de Costa Rica, San José, Costa Rica, 2 Graduate Institute of Biomedical Materials and Tissue Engineering, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan, 3 Alistair Reid Venom Research Unit, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool, United Kingdom, 4 Instituto de Biomedicina de Valencia, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones ...

1 Instituto Clodomiro Picado, Facultad de Microbiologı́a, Universidad de Costa Rica, San José, Costa Rica, 2 Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, John Radcliffe Hospital, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, 3 School of Medicine & Health Sciences, University of Papua New Guinea, Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, 4 Australian Venom Research Unit, Department of Pharmacology, University...

Ultrasound was used to measure newborn splenic dimensions and calculate the volumes in a malarious and a non-malarious region of Papua New Guinea. The median splenic volume of infants born in Madang, where malaria transmission is high throughout the year, was 5.2 cm3/kg, while that of infants born in Goroka, where malaria is not endemic, was 2.6 cm3/kg. The cause of this difference is unknown, ...

Because the prevalence of dengue fever in urban settings in Papua New Guinea is unknown, we investigated the presence of dengue using the NS1 antigen test in an outpatient-based prospective observational study at Port Moresby General Hospital. Of 140 patients with acute febrile illnesses, dengue fever was diagnosed in 14.9% (20 of 134; 95% confidence interval [95% CI] = 9.6-22.4). Malaria (2 of...

We report a case of Baló's concentric sclerosis (a variant of multiple sclerosis) from Papua New Guinea. A 42-year-old woman with a past episode of optic neuritis presented with a left hemiparesis. Magnetic resonance imaging revealed a solitary large tumour-like right cerebral lesion with a pattern of concentric bands of different signal intensities. The diagnosis was established by biopsy of t...

Background: Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has been an important cause of bone infection since the 1940s. Current guidelines recommend targeted antibiotic use for osteomyelitis treatment informed by microbial sensitivity patterns. However, in settings without microbiology facilities, empirical antibiotic use is common. Unrecognized antibiotic resistance potentiates persisten...