Sopas Adventist Hospital, located in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, has closed its doors following two years of tribal warfare around the hospital and a murder attempt on the director of nursing last month.  An escalation in the violence forced the closure of the facility which, for 40 years, has provided medical care for the 250,000 people living in villages of the Enga mountains and valleys. 

Dr. Percy Harrold, health director for the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the South Pacific, says the closure decision was made late last month when it became apparent that staff members at the 100-bed hospital and nursing college were increasingly at risk.  “After two years of operating under duress, repeated threats from armed individuals and groups, the recent destruction of a hospital ambulance and bus, and the attempt to murder the director of nursing, Francis Makop, the hospital administration closed the hospital,” says Harrold.

Makop was attacked in the hospital on November 21.  He received a knife wound to his right hand and was saved from axing by the intervention of a bystander, who wrested the axe away from the attacker, according to local news reports.

The violence stems from inter-tribal warfare, which broke out in 1998 following a murder on the hospital’s perimeter.  Harrold was visiting Sopas Hospital for an annual inspection when he heard the first shotgun blast of the conflict. “Within a short time, warring tribes demanded compensation and retaliation for the loss of this one life,” he says. “Eventually the fighting escalated from bows and arrows and homemade shotguns to semi-automatic rifles, and some local hospital staff were killed.” 

Harrold says that more than 200 villagers took refuge on the hospital compound while police with high powered rifles acted to protect hospital property and staff.  “On occasions since then, the hospital has been closed for days at a time because of active fighting outside the compound,” he adds.

Dr. Isaac Ogendi Menge, the hospital’s chief medical officer, has expressed great sadness at having to be involved in the decision.

“At the time of the closure, Dr. Menge and the surgeon, Dr. Elmer Ribeyro, had a hospital full of patients who needed to be transferred to other hospitals in Mt. Hagen and Wabag,” says Harrold.  He reports that all the staff have left and police are protecting the deserted hospital compound from looting. The hospital’s College of Nursing has been relocated to Pacific Adventist University near Port Moresby, and the students have left the Sopas campus and dispersed to their homes around the country.

“The witness of Sopas Adventist Hospital has been amazing, with its health care providing an edge for evangelism in the province of Enga,” says Harrold.  “It began in the 1960s, and grew to a 100-bed facility providing medical, surgical, pediatric, and obstetric care of a high standard.”  For some time, Sopas also operated a “flying doctor service” to isolated villages of the rugged mountain region.

Hospital administrators say they expect the hospital will be reopened as a mission clinic as soon as it is a secure place in which to live and work. “The reopening depends on a return to law and order and the realization that power from the barrel of a gun is not power at all,” says Harrold.