BY SAMIE WAIKORI
Malaita premier Martin Fini says the province is facing ‘real challenges in terms of health’ which is a ‘setback’ for his people.
He said Malaita has the highest population in the country with more than 170,000 people, and although the province has more health facilities than other provinces, it is still not adequate to meet the health challenges.
Premier Fini said yesterday that Malaita province is fortunate to have health facilities in almost all its 33 wards.
He said the province has two hospitals; Kilu’ufi and Atoifi, three Area health centres; Afio, Malu’u, Nafinua and 85 rural health clinics.
However, Fini said the ratio of nurses against the total population would be estimated around 20, 494 people to be served by a single nurse at a given time in a year.
“This is serious and needs urgent consideration by the province together in collaboration with the responsible stakeholders,” he said.
Fini said this is needs MPG through its stakeholders must strategize to ensure these issues are strategically tackled.
Moreover, he said though Malaita province has access quiet moderate distribution of health services, many of its health facilities are deteriorated and need immediate attention.
Fini said this caused number of health facilities in the province to close because of their run-down status.
He said another ongoing major concern in this sector is shortage of health workers continue to experience in the province.
The premier said these are real health challenges for Malaita province that need to be addressed to ensure quality health service for people in the province.
He said the current reign redirection government prioritize health sector under its rolling development plan and these are some of the areas they are looking at.
In trying to address these challenges, Malaita provincial government has over the past years built a number of clinics through the PCDF programme.
There are also NGOs and other stakeholders in the province are trying to address the challenges through number of projects like; RWASH, sanitation and others.
Thus, a call by Fini is for all stakeholders to try and work together through their various programs to see where they can go in addressing the challenges.
