The Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) has made a contribution to Fiji’s Ministry of Health for the purchase of insecticides to carry out mosquito control interventions for the next three months.
This contribution comes in response to Honourable Minister for Health Neil Sharma’s recent call for assistance from development partners to help Fiji respond to the current dengue outbreak.
‘This financial support from SPC is an unusual response related to the specific nature of the worsening dengue epidemic in Fiji and the type of request that was placed to us by Fiji Ministry of Health,’ said Dr Yvan Souarès, Deputy Director of SPC’s Public Health Division.
‘We are not a donor agency. Our role is to deliver capacity-building activities and scientific and/or expert advice to our 22 Pacific Island members.’
In addition to this contribution, experts from SPC’s Public Health Division will continue to provide technical assistance and advice to Fiji Ministry of Health in response to this outbreak in collaboration with their partners from the World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
SPC has recently repeatedly publicly voiced its concerns about the unprecedented and increasing pressure the whole Pacific Islands region is currently suffering from mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue, chikungunya and zika virus infections.
