More MIQ madness

Stuff reports:

Abigail Peden lies on a couch in Papua New Guinea moaning with pain as her father tries hard to keep it together.

But all Dan Peden has been able to do is wait and watch his 9-year-old daughter suffer for almost four days and hope she will be treated before the shattered bones around her elbow, caused by a fall, create a lifelong injury.

The Peden family, originally from Rotorua, are in Papua New Guinea as missionaries. Unable to get the surgery Abigail requires in the lesser developed Pacific nation, they desperately applied for an emergency managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) exemption to fly her home to New Zealand, and are now waiting for a decision to be made.

A doctor’s report seen by Stuff from the New Tribes Medical Centre in Goroka states Abigail’s young age means her condition is urgent, and she will need a paediatric orthopaedic surgeon in New Zealand to operate.

This is not a decision that should take days for the Government to make.

It is not a decision that should even take hours.

Within minutes of this landing on the desk of the decision maker, the decision should have been made to let nine year old Abigail return immediately.