Margaret Rombuk, Papua New Guinea

Saving lives in Papua New Guinea

Margaret Rombuk, an alumni of CEDPA's Global Women in Management program, was raised in a missionary environment in a rural community in Papua New Guinea.

Her church—the Church of the Nazarene—addressed healthcare needs by setting up hospitals and a nursing college. This work inspired Margaret to train as a nurse and she has devoted herself to public health ever since.

Margaret also has a commitment to helping people who don’t have the resources for such care. This commitment was fine-tuned after she moved with her husband to the capital city of Port Moresby and worked for three years in the private sector.

“For private doctors,” said Margaret, “people had the money and could afford to go and sometimes you could see the women, the people who were suffering and really wanted to get the treatment, but they could not have access to it.” Through this experience, Margaret saw the need for access to health information.

It was at that point, in 2003, that she joined forces with Susa Mamas Inc., a non-profit organization in Port Moresby whose “vision is to reduce maternal and infant morbidity and mortality by promoting mother and baby friendly practices through education.”

Papua New Guinea has one of the highest infant and maternal death rates in the world, compounded by the fact that many women are illiterate. Thus, getting correct information to women is vital to saving lives. The program at Susu Mama’s (which means “breastfeeding mothers” in the local language) is to help introduce women to proper breastfeeding practices and to the appropriate diets for babies. The organization also provides information on family planning and immunization.

As a community nurse among a paid staff of nine, Margaret has incredibly busy days visiting the maternity ward of Port Moresby General Hospital and 15 other urban clinics. Among others, she makes well baby visits, gives presentations on nutrition, and provides hygiene education. In 2007, Susu Mamas and its cadre of five nurses saw nearly 106,000 women and 22,000 babies.

The challenge for the organization now is to develop resources to both maintain operations in Port Moresby and to expand these critical services to more rural areas. Susu Mama’s wants to set up similar operations in the towns of Hagen and Lae, for example, which are dotted along the main highway from the highlands to the coast.

As a newly-appointed clinical manager, Margaret will be traveling between these two centers and hopes eventually to run small clinics that are financially independent. Her dream is “to get the message to the rural people in the villages so they can have a healthier life. They don’t have access to the information that we give out to urban centers…. Our health system in our country is really poor so it’s something in my heart that I really want to educate them as much as I can.”

Margaret is one of CEDPA's more than 5,200 training alumni in over 150 countries worldwide. Learn more about CEDPA's training workshops