The impacts – direct and indirect – of the COVID-19 pandemic fall disproportionately on the most vulnerable and marginalized groups in society. PNG presents a range of contextual challenges, including difficult geography. Access to quality health services is limited, due to a lack of infrastructure, equipment, and qualified personnel3. Services are easily stretched or overwhelmed, and provision of specialised services and intensive care is limited. In the current situation, this can pose a problem of access to care if the number of infected people increases4. Coupled with gender inequality, which remains pervasive across the Pacific, in particular in the critical domains of leadership and decision making, access to and control of resources and gender-based violence5, the public health response to COVID-19 can become immeasurably more complex.