Page 10 - IB Dec 2020

Pacific People of the Year Pacific People of the Year

health workers to the places that need
them most. A team of Fijian nurses flew
to Marshall Islands recently, part of the
first flight to arrive in Majuro since bor-
ders closed. The nurses will be posted
to Majuro and Ebeye hospitals to make
up for staffing shortfalls.
Australian Medical Assistance Teams
were sent to PNG in July and September
to support the country’s COVID re-
sponse. The teams included epidemiolo-
gists, emergency medicine specialists,
anaesthetists, emergency nurse prac-
titioners, medical laboratory scientists
and logisticians.

2021 and beyond
2020 is the Year of the Nurse and
Midwife, and at the WHO headquarters
in Geneva, Elizabeth Iro from the Cook
Islands has been working to galvanise
support and advocate for these health
workers as the WHO’s Chief Nursing
Officer.
Iro says COVID-19 has highlighted the
resilience of nurses, and their capac-
ity for innovation, but also some of the
weaknesses in health systems globally.
Shalini is one of the senior scientists at the Fiji Centre for Disease Control working to run COVID-19 tests.
Photo: Fiji government “We are finding a high number of
nurses are actually being infected or are
dying because they are at the front line,
pandemic. there…Right now, we need boots on the so we need to be able to protect them
“In the beginning, it was the fear ground people. And we need people and ensure that there is no discrimi-
of the unknown. I was worried about to treat and clean up this mess. So we nation against them, that there is no
taking the virus home and infecting my need people out there like bug detec- violence, because that’s something that
family. Our relatives stopped visiting us tives,” Manglona told the Pacific Daily has come out of some of the country
as they were apprehensive too. I felt News. experiences where people start feeling
discriminated against,” he said. “A lot of these countries were de- threatened because they know there is
At the Red Cross workshops, Soal and pendent on visiting medical teams and a nurse living next door and they feel
others like him have been able to share overseas medical referrals and [these] threatened because of the risks they are
their fears. cater for the lack of in country skills,” seen to bring to their community. We’ve
As with many aspects of our societ- says Sunia Soakai. “A classic case of this seen violence, we’ve seen discrimina-
ies, the virus has exposed existing is cancer patients who have a good like- tion, we’ve seen stressed out nurses,
weaknesses in our societies. In health ly outcome. Because borders are closed, we’ve seen them burnt out, we’ve seen
systems, this includes staff shortages. their chances diminish each day that in some countries where they don’t
Guam’s Central Medical Director for they are not able to be evacuated.” want to continue to nurse which is
Public Health, Dr Janna Manglona says “At the end of the day, there are really sad…so that’s a real concern. So
the island needs more people on the non-COVID services that need to con- we have an obligation to ensure their
ground. tinue,” he says. “Childhood vaccination, wellbeing,” she told Islands Business.
“We need tracers and nurses and ante natal care, scheduling of surgi- “We really can’t afford to be put in
medical personnel because right now, cal operations, and there is anecdotal that place again. It’s shown we don’t
the only way to stop the chain of information that vaccination rates have have enough nurses in some countries,
transmission is through contact tracing… dropped, antenatal clinic attendance we’ve had to call on retired nurses to
identifying who are the people are out has also dropped.” come back to work, we’ve had to call
There has been limited movement of on nursing students so they can be

10 Islands Business, December 2020