In the early evening on Friday, a woman arrived at hospital, bloody stumps instead of fingers on her right hand, her left hand all but severed.

"Chop wounds" is the medical term used by the doctors and nurses in remote Papua New Guinea - and for this woman the injury was the horrible consequence of her father attacking her with a machete.

Irish nurse Aoife Ni Mhurchu treats a patient last year at Tari Hospital in the highlands region of Papua New Guinea. The woman sought treatment for lacerations after her husband cut her with a knife on the back of her head and both hands. Credit:Jodi Bieber/MSF

"We still don't know if we've succeeded in saving her hand," said Aoife Ni Mhurchu, an Irish nurse who was called in to help for the two hour emergency surgery after the woman arrived at the Tari hospital in the southern highlands region.

Violence is a cruel fact of life for many women in PNG, with a recent report estimating almost two-thirds of local women suffer physical or sexual violence in their lifetime.