In December I was asked by The Guardian to investigate Papua New Guinea’s frighteningly low vaccination rate – among the lowest in the world. As with everything in PNG, it’s complicated. And difficult to get across from my home office in Melbourne. But with the help of a collection of experts in health and society, … Continue reading
This latest edition of Griffith Review is dedicated to nature writing, exploring a range of environments, investigating “how these places are changing and what they might become; what is flourishing and what is at risk”. It was a chance for me to reflect on the critical but complex business of conservation in PNG, visiting landscape, … Continue reading
When I went to Nigeria in April 2017 to research a story on the efforts there to stamp out polio, I couldn’t help but be grateful – and a bit mystified – that the disease had been absent so long from Papua New Guinea. With only a small proportion of the country having access to … Continue reading
As a serial visitor and close observer of PNG, I’ve been tuned in to the growing distress and anger of health workers at the collapse of supply lines of basic medicines and equipment to hospitals and clinics right across the country. Social media has been churning with reports of desperate and often grieving families. All … Continue reading
Papua New Guinea has one of the highest rates of child malnutrition in the world, with studies indicating that one in two children is chronically stunted, a condition from which they can never recover. The reasons are complex. It’s rarely a question of hunger, rather a lack of critical nutrients in the first 1000 days … Continue reading
Thrilled and honoured to be nominated as a finalist in the 2018 Australia Museum Eureka Prizes in the science journalism category. Continue reading
Following up my longform articles for Undark and The Atlantic (links can be found in earlier posts) I filed this radio doco for ABC RN’s The Health Report on what is hopefully the end game against this devastating virus. Tragically, around the same time, vaccine-derived polio turned up right next door, in PNG, where the … Continue reading
Earlier this year I went to northern Nigeria to research a story on the final push to wipe out wild poliovirus from the last crucibles of disease in terrorised parts of Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Commissioned by Undark magazine, it was co-published in The Atlantic. Continue reading
My story for Cosmos magazine on the work of research scientists in Papua New Guinea into that diabolical human foe, the malaria parasite. Photos by Mayeta Clark. Link here. Continue reading
One of the perks of the job is to meet the likes of Peter Doherty, and I’ve had the great luck to interview and chat with him a dozen times or so over the past several years. Indeed he kindly wrote a lovely endorsement of my climate book, a few years back. A gorgeous, brilliant, … Continue reading
Notebook & Narrative by Jo Chandler 