FROM humble beginnings in Papua New Guinea, Horsham obstetrician and gynaecologist Yakep Angue has received one of the highest honours in medicine.
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Through support from the Wimmera Health Care Group and Wimmera Base Hospital, he has now received a fellowship from the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
Dr Angue started his journey to medicine in a rural area of Papua New Guinea, where he was born.
He had to walk for two hours to primary school each day while living in the southern highland of Papua New Guinea.
He then moved to boarding school for four years.
He went to a secondary school in another province where he completed year 11 and year 12.
He said it was at this school that he learned to speak and write English.
Dr Angue said he was good at school and decided to pursue a career in medicine.
“I knew I wanted to work with women in rural areas,” he said.
“Medicine was the best field to work in and it could take me anywhere in the world.”
He started six years of medical school in 1989 and then started working in various parts of the country in rural obstetrics and gynaecology.
He said his work in Papua New Guinea and later Vanuatu was very different to his work in Australia.
“There was often no infrastructure or medical tools to work with,” he said.
“We were very limited – we just had to rely on our clinical knowledge and our hands.”
Dr Angue worked in regions where pregnant women would not come to see him until they were already in labour.
He said tropical disease and anemia were common.
“Labouring women sometimes presented after they had been in labour for more than two days,” he said.
Dr Angue said because they left it too late, many women would present to him with a dead fetus in their uterus.
He said cancers were also an issue.
Dr Angue decided to do a postgraduate in obstetrics because he felt he could offer more to women and families in any part of the world.
“We were very limited – we just had to rely on our clinical knowledge and our hands.”
- Yakep Angue
He came to Australia and started specialist training in 2003 at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne.
Dr Angue said the work there was very busy, with about one baby born every hour.
He first came to Horsham in 2005 to train at Wimmera Base Hospital.
He returned again in 2007 before spending three and a half years as a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist in Vanuatu through Australian Volunteers International.
He then returned to Horsham in 2012 and has been in the region ever since.
Dr Angue said he liked working with Wimmera women and babies.
“I help deliver a new baby every day – sometimes two a day,” he said.
The hospital has about 400 births a year.
“Horsham has given me a great work environment – it feels like home here,” he said.
“I have no plans to leave.”
Dr Angue said it took him a while to get his fellowship.
“It was a lot of work and it is a huge achievement,” he said. “I am the first person from Papua New Guinea to achieve this fellowship since the country’s independence in 1975.”
Dr Angue said staff at the hospital was very supportive. “They spent time and money on me – they paid for all my travel,” he said.
“The fellowship is not something that is handed to you, you have to really earn it.
“It took six years for me to get there.”
Dr Angue said the fellowship gave him confidence in his ability to teach others.
“Working at the Wimmera Health Care Group is easy, because we already have a healthy population here in the region,” he said.
“Working in Papua New Guinea, I had to try and treat people when they had no basic education or understanding about what was happening.
“In Vanuatu, there was different issues again with language and culture.
“Working with women can be difficult because you also have to work with their husbands and children.”
Dr Angue said he fell in love with Horsham when he first moved here.
He now works at the Wimmera Medical Clinic in Horsham.
He said he didn’t understand why more specialists didn’t relocate to the Wimmera.
“The staff here are super supportive – you wouldn’t get that anywhere else,” he said.
Melbourne-based obstetrician and gynaecologist Max Haverfield was Dr Angue’s mentor during his campaign to receive his fellowship.
Dr Haverfield and Dr Angue ended up forming quite a strong bond.
Dr Haverfield now travels to Horsham to consult from the Wimmera Medical Centre as well.
“I can’t praise Yakep enough, he was very deserving of his fellowship,” he said.
“And to come from where he has and to accomplish this is just wonderful.
“He has just gone from strength to strength.”
Dr Haverfield said Dr Angue’s fellowship was also a credit to the Wimmera Health Care Group.
“They have supported him in a way that a lot of other hospitals would not do, it is very impressive,” he said.