Our Story

Our story begins in 2008, with the cancer clinic at Port Moresby General Hospital. The clinic provided outpatient care, with a few beds in its chemotherapy day-care room. From this beginning, the service would grow into today’s Clinical Oncology Department, with a vision for a comprehensive cancer center.

PMGH’s story is one part of a wider national effort, alongside cancer services at ANGAU in Lae. In the years that followed, the idea of a comprehensive cancer center at PMGH would begin to take shape.

By 2018, the vision had grown: a comprehensive center bringing radiotherapy, cancer treatment and specialist training together at PMGH. The design offered a first glimpse of what that future could look like.

Construction began in 2019. A project that had existed in plans and drawings was now becoming a physical part of the hospital.

In June 2020, concrete pumps reached across the construction site as the radiotherapy bunkers began to take shape. By October, their walls were rising. These rooms would form the foundations of a new radiotherapy service at PMGH.

Another kind of foundation was being laid alongside them. The Clinical Oncology Department was established in March, and the MMed Clinical Oncology curriculum received UPNG and Senate approval in November. The first phase of construction was completed that December. The building, the department and the path to local specialist training were moving forward together.

As the framework and roof rose, work was also underway far beyond the construction site. Medical physicists, radiation therapists, nurses and pharmacists took part in overseas attachments and remote education, developing the skills needed for the new service. Partnerships with Canberra and ACT Health in 2023 helped support this preparation.

Every room taking shape at PMGH would need people ready to work in it, bringing together the knowledge and care that equipment alone cannot provide.

In August 2024, the oncology multidisciplinary team began meeting to discuss patients together. Breast and head-and-neck cancers were among the early cases. Different specialties could consider the next steps in a patient’s care, including referral to ANGAU when radiotherapy was needed while PMGH prepared its own service.

Inside the building, the work became more familiar: a nursing-station counter, rooms taking shape, corridors and patient areas receiving their finishes. The photographs from 2025 and 2026 show the center moving from its concrete shell towards the spaces where patients and staff will meet.

There is still work between finishing a room and welcoming a patient. Installation, testing and commissioning bring the treatment equipment and clinical teams together as preparations for opening continue.

In 2026, the MMed Clinical Oncology programme welcomed its first two trainees. The curriculum approved six years earlier had become a training journey for a new generation of specialists in Papua New Guinea.

Their five-year programme connects this center’s future to the people who will help shape it. Alongside the new facilities and partnerships, local specialist training is becoming part of the continuing story of cancer care at PMGH.