Pacific health ministers unite around shared priorities

The importance of stronger and more resilient health systems was reinforced by four health ministers—representing Fiji, Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Tuvalu—while attending the Pacific Health Systems Flagship Course in Fiji in February. While each country faces its own unique challenges, discussions also revealed common themes around improving the service capability of health facilities, building workforce capacity, and the value of regional collaboration.

Ministers emphasised the importance of primary care as the foundation of a healthy population. “If I can narrow it down to some of our key priorities,” said Fiji’s Health Minister, Ratu Atonio Lalabalavu. “A big one is the improvement of primary health care.” 

Frontline community-based health care facilities have an important role to play in addressing the region’s most critical health issue—non-communicable diseases (NCDs). “Diabetes and hypertension are the two major drivers of NCDs, and we need to address that,” said Tuvalu’s Minister for Health and Social Welfare Tuafafa Lautasi. Tonga’s Health Minister, Ana Akau’ola echoed similar concerns, pointing to hypertension as a major cause of premature deaths. “If people can be taught, can make it their own initiative to go and get their health checked in time … they can live longer.”

Investing in health facilities was another common area of focus. “In five years’ time,” said Solomon Islands’ Minister for Health Paul Bosawai. “Our priorities are to refurbish, rebuild, and also construct health facilities. I would like to see more than 50% of our provincial hospitals refurbished so that we can provide better health services for our rural people.” Fiji’s Minister Lalabalavu agreed, saying he wanted to ensure that “health infrastructure—all the relevant facilities that look after primary care, secondary care, and tertiary care—are scaled up in their ability to provide service delivery.”

Digital innovation is presenting significant opportunities in healthcare, particularly in the Pacific context, where service delivery is made difficult by the distances between islands and health facilities. “We would like to have a digital health system enabling us to provide service by way of telemedicine,” said Tuvalu’s Minister Latasi, who also noted the urgency of investing in the health workforce, “we are looking at filling key positions in the Ministry of Health … we need more specialized doctors.”

Stronger regional collaboration was an opportunity underlined by Minister Latasi, who is exploring joint pharmaceutical procurement to reduce costs and called for greater collaboration: “Tuvalu cannot work alone … we need to promote regional cooperation.” Reflecting on how his country could continue to support the training of health care workers for the region, Minister Lalabalavu said Fiji had good training institutions that could be strengthened further so that they “can provide medical personnel that can serve in our community and also serve within the region.”

The Pacific Health Systems Flagship Course was a collaboration between the World Bank’s global Health Nutrition and Population Unit, the World Bank Pacific Health team and the Australian government through the Advance UHC partnership.