Fiji has enough doctors: Dr Waqainabete

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Health and Medical Services Minister Dr Ifereimi Waqainabete. Picture: FT FILE

THERE are enough doctors in the country, says Minister for Health and Medical Services Dr Ifereimi Waqainabete.

He said having 815 doctors in Fiji was not bad for a country with over 900,000 people.

Dr Waqainabete said the number of doctors the country has at the moment was better than what the country had before.

“This is enough to cater for the growing number of Fijians or if there was a need to recruit more doctors, this number is better than a decade ago,” he said.

Dr Waqainabete highlighted that Fiji’s population has not grown very much and that they had increased the number of doctors up to four times within the past 20 years.

“Within the last four to five years we’ve gone from 400 doctors to 815 doctors. So you can see that the Government has made very significant contributions towards increasing the critical mass of doctors and really decreased that shortage that we had before.”

He said the ministry was grateful to the Fiji National University’s nursing practitioner program that had assisted the ministry.

Dr Waqainabete added they would continue to absorb more doctors from tertiary institutions.

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