Minister for Health Jone Usamate said there are currently 510 doctors in Fiji within the Ministry and our doctor-patient ratio currently stands at one doctor per 1600 population.

He was responding to a question raised by Dr Neil Sharma on the doctor-patient ratio and how will it be met and their target for the next five years.

“This is excluding doctors in private practice which currently stands at about 200 and if this is taken into account then the ratio drops to 1: 1200 population,”Mr Usamate said.

He said the Government had approved 150 new establishments for doctors from 2014.

“Taking into consideration our population growth, the attrition rate of doctors and the projections we have made, we are targeting to meet the WHO standards by 2017 and we believe that if the number of the new doctors entering the population of doctors and the accretion rate does not change then we should be able to meet the target of 1: 1000 population by the year 2017,”he said.

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