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The Ministry of Health and Medical Services (MOHMS) has been working closely with the Ministry of Education and World Health Organization (WHO) to address the recent outbreak of meningococcal disease at the St John’s College Cawaci in Levuka, Ovalau Island.

Meningococcal disease is a life threatening bacterial infection that usually causes inflammation on the lining of the brain and spinal cord (meningitis) and/or blood poisoning (meningococcemia). Whilst the disease is not common, it is a very serious illness that can develop quickly and cause death.

In response to the outbreak, the MOHMS sent a vaccination team to Levuka to vaccinate all students and staff at the college with the meningococcal vaccine, Sanofi Pasteur Menactra. Vaccination is critical to preventing the spread of meningococcal disease as the vaccine builds a person’s immune system to fight against the bacteria.

The meningococcal vaccine was supplied by the WHO and provides protection against meningococcal serogroup A, C, Y, W135. Testing of suspected case samples in Australian laboratories, facilitated by WHO, confirmed that meningococcal serogroup C was responsible for this recent outbreak.

The vaccine was administered by a single injection in the upper arm. This vaccine can cause some side effects, such as low grade fever, nausea, diarrhea, headaches and swelling where the injection was given; however the risk of serious side effects is extremely low. As such a team of medical staff were assigned to monitor all students in the school following their vaccination and treat any complaints.

In addition to the vaccination program, the MOHMS will continue to provide important meningococcal health information to equip students and staff with necessary knowledge about the disease and increase monitoring of students to support early detection and rapid treatment of potential new cases.

Tuesday 4^th October 2016

Increasing community based programs is one of the key strategies of the Ministry of Health and Medical Services to raise awareness on the reproductive health development. Minister, Hon. Rosy Akbar reiterates that it will be achieved through providing a comprehensive and integrated reproductive health services in communities.

“In providing an enabling environment, the Ministry of Health and Medical Services is committed towards improving the accessibility to reproductive health services. The International Conference on Population Development (ICPD) Plan of Action affirms that reproductive rights embrace certain human rights that includes the recognition of basic rights of individuals to have the information and means to access highest standard of Reproductive Health services. Fiji is one of the Pacific Island Country (PIC) signatories of the ICPD.

“The Reproductive Health Policy of Fiji explicitly supports the rights of all women and men to have access to curative and preventive reproductive health services. It also takes note of the rights of young people to have access to youth friendly services, access to reproductive health information that will help them make responsible choices and in particular prevent unplanned pregnancy, STIs/HIV.

“The role of Non-Government Organizations (NGO’s) in raising awareness at community level on Reproductive Health and Family Planning services is notable. And linking of the public sector with these organizations has significantly contributed towards improving access to services especially to those hard-to-reach vulnerable groups,” Minister Akbar said.

The Health Ministry will also capitalize on a collaborative platform to enable active participation of the communities in responding to the reproductive health issues.

“Increased awareness is the key to enable the communities to understand the impact of Family Planning on their future health, livelihood and wellbeing. Strengthening the health systems response to unmet needs in terms of specialized nurses in Family Planning through provisions of training, availability of information and guidelines on Family Planning also needs to be addressed.

“It also means increasing accessibility of counseling services at all levels of health system including the community level. And empowerment of community health workers and general awareness on booking for antenatal clinic and through the stages of prenatal and postnatal care are some of the ways the Ministry will enhance the community based programs for reproductive health services,” Minister Akbar added.

Reproductive health services in Fiji covers a wide area of health care, the main ones include:

• Safe Motherhood – encompasses maternal care and neonatal care
• Infant and child care • Adolescent health care
• Family Planning and Prevention of Abortion
• STI-HIV prevention and management, and Basic Infertility services
• Management of gynaecological morbidity – including reproductive tract cancers & infections.

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Suva, Fiji – An Emergency Medical Team (EMT) Country Preparedness Workshop began today at Pacific Harbour aimed in providing an opportunity for key country health and emergency service leaders to engage collectively and further strengthen national capacity to respond to disaster emergencies and outbreaks including events that require international Emergency teams.

The Ministry of Health and Medical Services with support from the World Health Organization is conducting an Emergency Medical Team (EMT) Country Preparedness Workshop. This is part of the commitment towards disaster preparedness, and experience in deploying national rapid response teams and accepting elements of the new global health emergency workforce (Emergency Medical Teams (EMTs), Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) The Government and Ministry of Health & Medical Services accepted a WHO proposal to run a GHEW workshop in late October 2016 to expand its capacity to respond and coordinate responses to emergencies in future.

The Fiji Ministry of Health and Medical Services (MoHMS) has created a technical working group (TWG) to manage the project and in particular the development of national EMTs and public health rapid response teams and improve the mechanisms for identifying needs, requesting and coordinating international assistance using the EMT coordination framework and access to expert groups such as GOARN. The Fiji EMT is known as FEMAT (Fiji Emergency Medical Assistance Team).

The workshop aims to help Fiji Islands national health response system better manage deployments for national clinical and public health teams to areas of need during outbreaks and disasters. It further is aimed to understand what the World Health Organization and partners support to national response efforts, how to activate and access teams and experts from international EMTs and GOARN. The workshop will be able to match country level risks and gaps with international EMT capacities as well help develop national response standard operating procedures (SOPs) at every stage of the response cycle to incorporate national and international EMT capacities.

The Deputy Secretary Public Health, Dr. Eric Rafai opening the workshop said that this training is aimed at bringing together a group of health professionals with supporting Ministries and partners to prepare for emergency health care specifically for disaster affected populations. He further reminded the participants that the Pacific was just a few days away from the next cyclone season and that this preparedness workshop was timely to revisit our collective effort for emergency medical responses to disaster and emergency scenarios.

Mr. Sean Casey, the Health Cluster Coordinator of WHO, Suva also spoke and pledged the support of the WHO Suva Office towards the EMT Pacific Initiative. He assured the participants WHO support in emergency preparedness and response capacity in the health sector.

The first day had participants from Ministry of Health & Medical Service, representatives from the Red Cross, National Disaster Management Office, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Representatives from the RFMF, Navy, Police and National Fire Authority, a representative from Fiji National University, the representatives from Volunteer First Responder and UN agencies.

The workshop is facilitated by WHO EMT Secretariat Team from Geneva, WHO Manila Office and WHO Suva with guest’s speakers also from the Australian Medical Assistance Team (AusMAT) and the New Zealand Assistance Team (NZMAT) teams. The EMT Pacific initiative is supported through the World Health Organization through the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs support. The workshop ends on Thursday.

The Fiji Ministry of Health and Medical Services (MOHMS) has released a World Health Organization (WHO) report on the recent outbreak of Acinetobacter baumannii (A.baumannii) bacterium within the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at the Colonial War Memorial Hospital (CWMH), Suva.

Download Full Report here

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