The Foundation for Rural Integrated Enterprises & Development (FRIEND) Fiji’s over 10-year-old health program has brought many positive changes to rural communities, especially for non-communicable disease-affected people.

But despite the obvious changes, FRIEND Fiji founder Sashi Kiran says more can be done to help Fijians, especially the growing number of amputees nationwide.

“One of the reasons we had to launch the health program was because when we were conducting our income-generating programs within our rural communities, diabetic and stroke cases were very visible and this is something that we continue to see to this day,” she said.

“The number of NCD cases in Fiji, in the world context, has been written as one of the highest.

“So, we could do all of the income generation we like and get people money, but if they are getting sick, it won’t matter.

“That was something that we needed to really look at.” Ms Kiran said while Fijians maintained a specific diet, it was not healthy.

“We started the health program and when we started talking to people, we realised there was a lot of cheap food-eating.

“So, when we do budgeting with them we realise that a lot of it is processed food.

“From those results, we then started backyard gardening with them and we developed the model nine by nine.

“When we say nine by nine we mean we encourage people to have a small plot that has nine varieties of fruits and vegetables.

“So they could have nine types of fruit, nine types of leafy vegetables or nine types of legumes and so on. If we do that it turns into an 81 variety garden.

“They didn’t have to do nine types of whatever they could plant, they could plant five or even four varieties but the idea remains that they are growing these different types of healthy and fresh produce for their consumption.

“Like in my own back yard, I have bananas, I have passion fruit and I have pomegranate and that becomes my variety of fruits then I have vegetables as well.

“That means what goes in the pot whether you are having soup or stew, there are more different types of vegetables that are going in and that means improved nutrition for the family.”