The Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research (PNG IMR) is the principal institution conducting health research in Papua New Guinea with a focus on health problems affecting the country's population.
Lymphatic filariasis (LF) is a mosquito-borne neglected tropical disease targeted by the World Health Organization (WHO) for global elimination as a public health problem. Sixteen Pacific Island countries and territories were historically endemic, and eight have now met the WHO criteria for elimination as a public health problem. Elimination as a public health problem does not imply zero transmission. Rather, it denotes that LF prevalence has been reduced below a defined threshold at which community transmission can be sustained. Following validation of elimination, the WHO recommends post-validation surveillance (PVS) to detect potential re-emergence of LF as a public health problem. However, implementing PVS is challenging in Small Island Developing States with dispersed populations, limited workforce capacity, resource constraints, and competing health priorities. The 'Voices and Visions: Building Partnerships for Integrated Serosurveillance of LF and Other Infectious Diseases in the Pacific Islands' meeting was held in Brisbane, Australia, from 8-10 July 2025. Fifty-one delegates, including Pacific LF programme managers, WHO representatives, global health partners, and academic researchers, reviewed regional PVS progress, discussed the newly released WHO guidelines for the implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of PVS, planned for PVS implementation, and explored novel multiplex bead assay (MBA) serological analysis methods to strengthen regional coordination for its development as a public health tool. Five broad themes emerged. First, the new WHO Monitoring and Epidemiological Assessment of Mass Drug Administration in the Global Programme to Eliminate Lymphatic Filariasis: A Manual for National Elimination Programmes, 2nd edn needs to be operationalised to meet decision-making needs across diverse Pacific settings. Second, integrating LF-PVS with existing surveys and health service activities could improve efficiency and long-term sustainability. Third, regional coordination and alignment of funding cycles will require high-level collaboration. Fourth, community engagement is essential to strengthen demand for PVS. Finally, while at an early stage and with further evidence needed, MBA laboratory methods hold promise for cost-effective, feasible integrated multi-pathogen serosurveillance.
In Papua New Guinea (PNG), like other countries, health service access, engagement and the provision of primary health and public health infectious disease care changed dramatically during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. To understand this disruption a photovoice study was conducted with community members (n = 12), clients of health services (n = 10) and healthcare workers (n = 5) and in six provinces in PNG during the third and largest wave of COVID-19 in country. The key findings from this study highlight how COVID-19 fear, and absence and avoidance of health facilities during COVID-19 directly influenced how healthcare was accessed and provided during COVID-19 in PNG. Spatiality, specifically the distance to service, to each other, and to treatment and care were directly influenced by health facility changes, service provision reconfigurations, and fear of COVID-19. This fear and these changes were presented through stark, but symbolic, images of health facilities empty and devoid of clients and healthcare workers. People struggled to get to health facilities due to a lack of transport, and when they could entry was restricted by locked gates and doors, and movement across health facility spaces was controlled by security. This article follows the varying, but mostly similar, experience of healthcare works and clients with respect to health setting spatiality and its important influence in providing or accessing care during COVID-19 - providing important lessons for the management of health facilities for future health emergencies and pandemics.
Using a sociomaterial perspective based on interviews with health workers, we examine how clinic-based HIV viral load testing and early infant diagnosis technologies reshape health care realities in Papua New Guinea. The use of such technologies redefine professional roles and health care experiences by empowering health workers to translate biomedical data into client-centered clinical management, while also contributing systemic tensions, such as the paradoxical recentralizing of care and heavier workloads. Despite these challenges, health workers view these clinic-based technologies as transformative tools that support ethical decision-making, reduce preventable deaths and expand equitable health care.
Malaria parasite genomes have been generated predominantly using Illumina short-read sequencing that requires expensive equipment, is time-consuming with complex protocols, and does not adequately interrogate complex genomic regions that harbour important malaria virulence determinants. The portable Oxford Nanopore Technologies MinION platform generates long reads in real time and may overcome these limitations. We present compelling evidence that Nanopore sequencing delivers valuable additional information for malaria parasites with similar data fidelity for single nucleotide variant (SNV) calls compared to standard Illumina whole-genome sequencing. We demonstrate this through sequencing of pure Plasmodium falciparum DNA, mock infections and natural isolates from low-density, asymptomatic infections. Nanopore has low error rates for haploid SNV genotyping and identifies structural variants not detected with short reads. Nanopore genomes can be directly compared to publicly available genomes and produce high-quality end-to-end chromosome assemblies including complex, previously difficult-to-access regions. Nanopore sequencing could expedite whole-genome surveillance of malaria and provide new insights into parasite genome biology.
Plasmodium vivax is the most widespread cause of malaria with a high burden of disease. Progress in reducing the global malaria burden has stalled with no vaccines available partly due to a limited knowledge of targets and mechanisms of protective immunity. We developed a platform to quantify antibody functions to multiple P. vivax antigens and dissect immunity in a longitudinal cohort of children from Papua New Guinea at risk of P. vivax malaria. We identified antigens targeted by multiple functional antibodies, including interactions with Fcγ receptors, which mediate different cellular effector functions, and complement fixation, advancing our understanding of P. vivax immunity. We identified specific antigens targeted by antibodies associated with protection from P. vivax malaria. Evaluating thousands of possible combinations, we identified subsets of antigens in the most protective combinations providing leads for developing highly protective multi-antigen P. vivax vaccines eliciting multi-functional antibody responses to achieve and sustain elimination.
