ABSTRACT
The Organic Law on Provincial Government and Local Level Government (OLPG and LLG) (1977) is the legal framework for decentralization of health in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The objective of the law was to improve service delivery and increase citizen participation. It also transferred public servants from national agencies and provincial Governments to districts. Subsequent reforms have been influenced by this law. Whereas in the majority of cases, the reforms and previous national health plans were not specifically designed to explicitly influence the quality of healthcare, the current National Health Plan has achieving “Quality” as part of its values. In June 2011, the National Department of Health (NDoH) launched the National Health Services Standards (NHSS) for PNG as “a blue print for providing safe, quality health services.”
