THE doctor to patient ratio is greater than one doctor to 800 people in the country Revealing this in Parliament yesterday, Minister for Health and Medical Services Dr Ifereimi Waqainabete said the World Health Organization’s minimum standard of one doctor to population was 1:1000 and he was pleased to announce that Fiji had crossed that threshold with greater than 1:800.
He added that the current establishment of filled doctor positions stood at 804.
“The total number of positions is 963, the total number of vacancies is 159,” he said.
“We have internal promotions that will be effected in this month and these are up to 40.”
These new recruitments include 13 senior medical officers, 15 principal medical officers, 10 chief medical officers, and two consultant positions.
Dr Waqainabete said they had also conducted recruitment from overseas and outside the civil service, some of them doctors working in the private sector.
“What this Government, through the Ministry of Civil Service and the Ministry of Health, has begun to implement is the right amount of hours acceptable both for the doctors and the communities,” he said.
Dr Waqainabete said not long ago doctors were working 36 hours straight without any rest.
“The implementation recently of work corrected hours and the fact that we have a surge in the acute clinical load in all our facilities may seem to suggest we do not have enough doctors.
“This policy has been implemented as a result of a joint review that considered the doctor to patient ratio and determined the doctors’ working hours could now be changed because we have the numbers.”
