Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape on Sunday night (December 11, 2022) announced that the government is moving to ensure that a standalone University for medical studies is established by 2025. He was speaking at a ball night which marked the end of training for the final year medical students’ class of 2022. This year’s cohort is the 50th since the first cohort recited their Hippocratic oath in November 1972. Papua New Guinea to have a Medical University “In 1972 the medical faculty graduated six medical students. The population was just on three million. Over the last fifty years we have graduated an average of thirty new doctors per year, but our population has increased to well over ten million. Our doctor to patient ratio is therefore worrying and we have to address that problem head on.” PM Marape said that it is absolutely important that the government invests in the training of doctors to help close the ratio to a more acceptable level. He said that the governmen