University of Newcastle

09/01/2025 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 09/01/2025 23:16

Newcastle experts to boost Papua New Guinea’s health emergency response capacity

Newcastle experts to boost Papua New Guinea's health emergency response capacity

Monday, 1 September 2025

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An Australian team of public health professionals and academics based at the University of Newcastle will support Papua New Guinea to build its capacity to respond to emergencies, like pandemics or natural disasters.

Field Epidemiology in Action (FEiA), a multidisciplinary team of epidemiologists, veterinarians, educators and anthropologists with a passion for international development and public health, has been awarded $499,496 through the Australian Government's Strategic Policy Grants Program to lead a new civil-military training initiative in Papua New Guinea.

By strengthening coordination between defence and health responders, the initiative aims to build a faster, more connected emergency response system to protect lives in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and contribute to regional stability across the Pacific.

Working in partnership with the Australian and PNG Defence Forces, and the PNG National Department of Health (NDoH), the project will build Papua New Guinea's capacity to respond to emergencies by integrating rapid response teams and emergency medical teams with defence emergency operations. The training will be practical, hands-on, and collaborative.

Military and civilian health professionals will train side by side through immersive, scenario-based exercises, including a real-life field simulation to contain a disease outbreak following a natural disaster, and test coordination across sectors under real-time pressure.

The University of Newcastle grant was one of 23 grants worth $5.7 million in total, awarded through the 2025 Strategic Policy Grants Program.

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University of Newcastle published this content on September 01, 2025, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on September 02, 2025 at 05:16 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at [email protected]