SYDNEY, June 23 (Xinhua) --The 9th Chinese medical team completed the handover with the 8th team in Papua New Guinea (PNG) on Friday, according to the Economic and Commercial Counsellor's Office of the Chinese Embassy to PNG.

The 8th Chinese medical team has been working in Port Moresby General Hospital (PMGH) since April 2017.

During their stay, the team members worked shoulder to shoulder with medical staff in PMGH and introduced advanced skills and services.

They performed over 300 delicate operations and introduced the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) skills, which greatly improves the diagnostic veracity.

The medical team also visited other provinces and cities, providing free medical services and medicines to local people.

The 9th Chinese medical team will spare no effort to integrate into PMGH and continue to promote medical services and help keep PNG people healthy.

In addition, the team will provide extensive medical training and education in PNG, as well as promote the construction of Sino-PNG Center for Urology Minimally Invasive Surgery in PMGH, which will be the most advanced and sophisticated one in PNG.

At the news conference, PNG's deputy secretary of Health Paison Dakulala said the arrival of Chinese doctors provide timely help for this country.

"It's always an important occasion to have those expertise come to our country," Dakulala said.

"For Papua New Guinea, we have 500 doctors for the whole country of 8 million people, and that's completely different when we look at the Chinese context,"

"And so over the years, over decades, we have enjoyed this relationship with our Chinese counterpart, who have coming from different parts of China and have been attached to us in the Port Moresby General Hospital and brought in valuable expertise for us."

The World Health Organization (WHO) representative in PNG Luo Dapeng said, in recent years, China has set a good example of "South-South cooperation" through Chinese medical teams, China-Australia-PNG Trilateral Aid Cooperation on Malaria Control and other projects.

"WHO appreciates the Chinese government's support," Luo said.

The Chinese medical program started in 2002. So far, China has despatched nine medical team consisted of 90 members.

During the past 16 years, medical team members have provided medical services to more than 100,000 PNG people and offered more than 1,000 medical trainings to local medical personnel.