Nikhil Aiyush Kumar 
Private hospitals in Fiji have found a loophole enabling them to employ under-qualified medical professionals.
This means that some doctors from overseas are acting as medical specialists when they don’t have proper qualifications.
With questions being raised about their competence, there are fears about appropriate health care for their patients.
Fiji Medical Association President Dr Alipate Vakamocea states that there’s a shortcut which enables some hospitals to bypass and avoid the FMA regulations.
“Now, we recently discovered that there’s another way in which certain specialists can get registered in Fiji, and that’s through the SPEC, the Skilled Professionals Evaluation Committee, which comes under the Ministry for Trade. And unfortunately, this is one of the ways in which certain hospitals are using to shortcut and circumvent the system so that they don’t come through the Fiji Medical Council.”
Vakamocea says that in order to curb this anomaly, the established processes need to be respected.
“I think it’s easy. We just get SPEC to acknowledge that there’s already a system that exists, a robust system coming through the Fiji Medical Council, and that we encourage them to use the Fiji Medical Council to do the registration, specifically for doctors who are practicing as specialists in Fiji. Maybe to remove that from their list of people that they recognize, because there’s already an existing system. Just use the system.”
Oceania Hospital Chief Executive Murgessan Pillay says to curb the extensive staff shortage they have to look for medical professionals overseas.
“And as you know, when the labor movement out of organizations is high and when the country is losing people, then you also lose experience and you lose depth of skills. In the short term, we need to bring from outside to fill those gaps.”
The Fiji Medical Association states that there are laws which lets SPEC overrule the Fiji Medical Council and legislation adjustments are needed so that other organizations don’t have the capacity to overrule the Fiji Medical Council and its set standards which ensure every doctor is properly qualified.
