'Relax Bougainville blockade'
The International Red Cross has urged the Papua New Guinea government to relax its blockade on medical supplies to Bougainville on humanitarian grounds.
A senior Red Cross International officer based in Rabaul, Andrew Sagam, made the fresh appeal as 62 patients needing urgent surgical operations admitted at the Arawa general hospital could not be operated on because the hospital had completely run out of medicines.
Sagam said the situation at the hospital, in central Bougainville, is critical: there is no medicine and only two doctors to attend to the sick who flock to the hospital daily. — SPANS/Pegasus