13th Sabbath Offering Builds 2 Remote Clinics in South Pacific

By Jarrod Stackelroth, South Pacific Adventist Record

With help from a 13th Sabbath offering, two Adventist clinics have opened in remote areas of Papua New Guinea to support communities with little or no basic medical care.

The South Pacific Division’s Adventist Health department hopes to build a total of four clinics with US$212,750 that it received from a 13th Sabbath offering in 2013. The project also got funding from the division’s camp mission offerings that were collected the same year.

“The communities were chosen due to their isolation, with no medical facilities nearby and little or no Adventist presence in the area,” the division said in a statement.

Construction was recently completed on a clinic and staff house to serve the 5,000 people of Bahula village in the Morobe Province of Papua New Guinea.

The six-bed clinic cost $77,355 and was completed by a Papua New Guinea building team. A team from western Australia was scheduled to help, but flooding in the area cut off the community and the trip was canceled. The Adventist Church’s Morobe Mission will staff the clinic.

The other remote clinic is in Arufi village, in Papua New Guinea’s Western Province. It has five beds, cost $71,040, and was completed by a fly’n’build team from northern Australia.

A part-time nurse has been visiting Arufi on a regular basis since the building was completed, and a permanent nurse is now being recruited.

One of the challenges on this project was a lack of gravel for concrete, project managers said. Gravel had to be flown in.

Both clinics will provide a general outpatient service, baby delivery, immunization, and maternal child health, and have solar power and water tanks.

A third clinic was scheduled to be built on Malakula Island on the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu in March. However, this was delayed by Cyclone Pam, which devastated the country in mid-March. Materials are coming from Santo, Vanuatu’s largest island, which was less affected by the cyclone, and work is expected to begin soon.