Nutritional study of the people of the Wabo and Ihu areas, Gulf Province

Abstract

Until very recently, little was known about the nutritional status of the people inhabiting the Purari River banks and its delta. The Purari River, which forms at the confluence of the Erave and Tua rivers, is in its upper part virtually uninhabited, except very few Pawaia settlements, such as Gurimatu (cf. Warrillow, this volume). Downstream of Gurimatu the river enters a series of gorges, to emerge from Hathor Gorge upstream of Uraru, a village which nowadays is virtually abandoned. Thus, it is only at Wabo where there is the first large settlement on the Purari River. Wabo has been projected to become a site of a hydroelectric dam, to be erected there sometime in the future. In 1976, during engineering feasibility studies for this scheme, a nutrition survey was carried out by the author and other members of the Nutrition Section of the Health Department of the Papua New Guinea Government. Apart from the Wabo and Uraru group of the predominantly Pawaia people, studies extended also to the mouth of the Vailala River at Ihu, east of the Purari Delta.