What Kind of Aid Does the Pacific (Part 5) - Health Care

Friends, the statistics are not good. In fact, they are very troubling. The state of health in the Pacific is poor. There are a myriad of reasons, but the primary two are lack of investment in health care services by government, and personal choices.

Before we talk about health care in terms of aid, let’s first address the issue of personal choice. For most countries, there is sufficient locally grown and produced healthy food to provide for adequate balanced diets. At times, cyclones and flooding and drought interrupt the food production process, and climate change is interfering with those processes, particularly in atoll countries, but for the most part, we’re still in a situation where we can grow our own food - enough to feed our families and sell the remainder at the market in order to have cash income to buy other necessities.

Sadly, though, personal health in the Pacific is deteriorating. We prefer less nutritious  imported foods, we fail to eat enough from our gardens. We have fruit growing on trees on the road side and yet…. We eat canned tuna and packaged noodles. And while the convenience of imported, packaged food is a real draw, we need to think long term. Malnutrition amongst children is on the rise, obesity in some countries is nearly epidemic. And medical professionals fret about the dramatic rise in cases of diabetes and heart disease - a direct result of diets far too reliant on carbs such as rice and bread, and not nearly enough fruit and bread. To put it this way: what you choose to eat is your own choice. If disaster strikes and you are too unhealthy to help your family, to contribute to rebuilding your community, that's no one’s fault but your own.

On the flip side is provision of health care services. Populations in the Pacific are growing but health care is not keeping up. There are not enough health care professionals, particularly in rural and remote areas, and they don’t have the tools they need to properly diagnose illness and treat patients. And people suffer. One of the problems is the failure of government to use funds for health care strategically - to invest in the development of health care professionals and ensure rural health centres have sufficient medicines and tools to do initial diagnoses treatments, and be able to refer patients to larger health centres if need be.

Sometimes we try to hard to focus on the big picture - health care systems rather than basic needs - that we feel overwhelmed by the problems. Donors need to recognize this too. Programmes on good food preparation and personal sanitation always result in dramatic improvements in health for very little investment. Providing generators and procedures for repairing them so that rural and remote health centres can keep vaccinations and medicines refrigerated? Invaluable. These are not quick fixes, but rather low hanging fruit that can translate into improved health and improved resilience.

The challenge is to make these a priority in the short term, rather than activities to be implemented in the long term once the ‘system’ is upgraded. The system is the responsibility of the government. Donors can help fill the gaps to help meet short term needs, and see the impacts that they so desperately want in the short term as well.