Vehicle boost in TB fight Rabi Fiji

[Stacey King]

FIJI TIMES ONLINE Samantha Rina Sunday, August 01, 2010

TRANSPORTATION has always been an issue in the provision of quality health care services.

In its efforts to help ease this problem, the Global Fund donated seven vehicles, a motorcycle and an outboard motor boat to the Ministry of Health, specifically to ease the burden of tuberculosis in Fiji.

Dr Neil Sharma, who's responsible for the health portfolio, said the vehicles were for the National TB program, one for the grant management unit and Fiji Red Cross Society while the boat and motorcycle were for Rabi Island.

Dr Sharma said the vehicles and boat would facilitate the delivery of TB treatment. He said case detection should improve and TB treatment and monitoring would be effected.

"While the transportation problems may be eased, there also remains the issues of manpower, infrastructure and service in our fight against tuberculosis.

"We also need to relook and consider these areas in our efforts to address TB," he said.

He said the prevalence of TB in Fiji decreased from 63 to 30 per 100,000 from 1990 to 2006.

"Mortality rates reduced from 0.7 per 100,000 to 0.3 and incidence rates of smear positive TB from 42 per 100,000 to 22, respectively.

"For the last 15 years, the notification rate of all TB cases in Fiji has declined at a rate of 3.9 per cent per year," he said.

Despite this picture of disease control, Dr Sharma said the notification of new smear-positive cases remained stable for the same period.