Praneeta Prakash 
As some healthcare professionals have sought better opportunities abroad, the Ministry of Health faces a considerable challenge due to the migration of public sector medical staff to the private sector.
Permanent Secretary Dr. James Fong emphasizes that the ministry is taking proactive measures to tackle this issue.
These steps include a focus on training and retraining, fostering collaboration with the private sector, and implementing strategies to retain talent.
Permanent Secretary Dr. James Fong.
He says the Health Ministry has placed training and re-training at the forefront of its agenda.
“Training and re-training to support to mitigate the impact of the current exodus of professionals is number one priority within our training program, we haven’t expanded our budget for providing in-house training. I mean over the last few weeks I have had to approve a lot more workshops then we usually do.”
Doctor Fong says the Ministry is actively exploring cooperation with the private sector.
“We having an exodus across the whole board. There is doctors, lab workers, there are radiology people that are moving out. The only thing that will help us at the moment is that a significant portion of the exodus is into the private sector in Fiji so we know that there is an opportunity for us to utilize the private sector to cover some of the gaps that we got.”
Through these initiatives, the ministry intends to fill the void left by the departure of medical professionals and uphold the delivery of high-quality healthcare services to the public.
