Meth trade fuelling Fiji’s HIV crisis: President tells UN

President Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu has told the United Nations that Fiji “cannot interdict a global supply chain alone”.

He pointed to methamphetamine trafficking as a driving force behind the country’s HIV emergency.

He said transnational criminal networks are trafficking the drug into the region, and it is now spreading HIV through injecting drug use.

“Our borders are oceans. Our populations are small. And the profits at stake exceed our national budgets,” he said.

Ratu Naiqama said the crisis is as much about crime as it is about health.

He asked partner nations to treat Pacific narcotics interdiction as a shared security interest, not just Fiji’s problem.

He set out what Fiji needs from the international community:

• Treatment and diagnostics priced within reach of small states;
• Full funding for the Global Fund and UNAIDS, so no region is short-changed;
• Recognition that stopping drug trafficking into the Pacific is a joint responsibility.

Ratu Naiqama linked the emergency to Fiji’s loss of trained workers.

A nurse who leaves the country, he said, is one Fiji trained and no longer has.

“A Fijian who dies of a treatable virus is the same subtraction, made permanent, with the cost of care left behind,” he said.

He said small states like Fiji are “losing the capacity to staff our own future” — through both migration and preventable deaths.

Feedback: kaneta.naimatau@fijisun.com.fj