Vale Florence Bundu, PNG Basketball stalwart

It is with deep sadness that we inform of the passing of Florence Bundu on 22nd December 2009.

It was a sad Christmas for the sporting fraternal in PNG and abroad as they joined the Bundu family to mourn the death of a great sports woman and administrator Florence Bundu.

Bundu 54, from Popondetta in the Northern Province died in Port Moresby on Tuesday evening, 22nd December 2008. 

Florence was a former national basketball player and coach, as well as holding the position of Basketball Director of Coaching at the National Sports Institute in Goroka from 1986 to 1988. In recognition of her work for basketball in PNG, Florence was named as one of FIBA Oceania's 40 'movers and shapers' in 2008.

Deputy Secretary General of the PNG Sports Federation and Olympic Committee (PNGSFOC) Auvita Rapilla said yesterday that Bundu suffered an asthmatic attack and was rushed to Port Moresby Hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival.

“Her dearest friend and sister Emily Taule, who was with her emailed me to tell me that Florence left her new puffer at home and when the attack happened in her office in town, there was nothing anybody could do.  Her daughter Jenny was racing against time to bring her puffer but she was already dead in the vehicle transporting her to the hospital,” she said.

Bundu was the female vice president of the PNGSFOC since 2007, a member of the PNG Women in Sport committee and deputy chairperson of the PNG HIV prevention through Sports committee.  She was also a member of the PNG sports policy review committee and SP Sports Award selection committee.

Rapilla said that Bundu completed the first module of the MEMOS X111 program in September in Lausanne, Switzerland and was to leave next week for the second module in Qatar.

“We were only yesterday (Tuesday) confirming her travel arrangements to Doha, Qatar on January 7 for the second module of the MEMOS program,” she said.

FIBA Oceania would like to express our deepest sympathy to Florence's family.