Yes, travel insurance is essential for a trip built around Kaiapit, a small airstrip serving the Markham Valley in Papua New Guinea's Morobe Province. This is genuine bush-strip flying rather than scheduled air travel with the usual safety net, and the honest starting point is that medical infrastructure this far from a real city is minimal to nonexistent. Anyone flying into Kaiapit for mission work, agricultural business, or genuine adventure travel should treat evacuation cover as the core reason for a policy, not an afterthought.
There is no meaningful hospital care at Kaiapit itself, and the first real step for anything serious is transfer to Lae, the nearest sizeable city and home to the region's main referral hospital. From there, more complex cases are typically referred on to Port Moresby, the capital, and the most serious cases sometimes require further evacuation to Australia - commonly Cairns or Brisbane - for specialist treatment PNG's own system cannot always provide. Confirm your policy explicitly covers this multi-step evacuation chain rather than one that only reimburses a local clinic visit.
Beyond the medical picture, check current government travel advisories for this part of Papua New Guinea before you travel, since guidance can vary by region and changes over time; this is not a blanket warning against the country, but conditions around remote inland travel are worth confirming close to your departure date. Many policies exclude activities or regions flagged under an active advisory, so read the wording rather than assume standard cover applies everywhere in the country equally.
Keep any clinic paperwork from Lae or Port Moresby, evacuation-flight records, and receipts for emergency transport, since claims involving a bush-strip evacuation typically need more documentation than a routine city illness. Many policies require prompt notice before evacuation costs are incurred, so review your policy's claims process before departure rather than mid-emergency from a location with limited communications.