China offers seven doctors to Tonga
Updated
Tonga's Director of Health says he will have discussions with the Chinese embassy in Tonga about China's offer to provide the nation with seven doctors.
He says formal discussions are expected to take place sometime this week. Dr Siale Akau'ola Tonga's Director of Health says the Tongan Government made a request to China to help it with its doctor shortage about two years ago.
Presenter: Christine Webster
Speaker: Dr Siale Akau'ola, Tonga's Director of Health
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AKAU'OLA: Well, we have not confirmed, we will still need to make formal discussions with the Chinese representatives in the country. Actually we got this about two years ago. There was a time when there was a really critical shortage of staff, a lot of people moving out and very few coming back. So we had expressed our desire to have more doctors from China, replenish our numbers and they obviously the dialogue with them has come through and they are now offering to provide a certain number of doctors. We still need to finalise this, we will talk with them, because obviously since the request was given a year or two ago, because the conditions at the moment have changed, so we have to look at the needs, perhaps the some of the things that we had asked have been fulfilled. But we will see. We have not actually received the formal list of experts that we had requested to get from China.
WEBSTER: When will you be having talks with China about this issue?
AKAU'OLA: Oh, very soon, actually it will be a couple of days.
WEBSTER: And hopefully an agreement will be reached? Do you know what time frame that will happen in?
AKAU'OLA: We will determine that after our initial discussion. We have not had any discussion with them.
WEBSTER: Is Tonga experiencing a shortage of nurses and doctors at present?
AKAU'OLA: In certain specialities, in certain specialities there are obviously we have requested to the Australian Government to fund one, two surgeons and one anaesthetist, and in fact so three of our doctors are being funded through Australian Government funding and we will continue to request that specific speciality to be supported by Australia in the future. It depends on our needs, because there are some areas that we believe that there are certain specialities that we hope it will come from Australia, because it would fit the specialty needs within the ministry. But clearly, there are other areas, other sources of support like from the Government of China, can easily fill some of the areas connected in the system.
WEBSTER: What areas will these doctors from China potentially be working in?
AKAU'OLA: Well, it probably we had request that they support NSCCR and we have only one institution at the moment. We had requested a substitution to support that person. There has been a request for other areas in maternal child health. So those are the areas we had earmarked a year or two ago and sent to China, so we are going to have another look at those areas again and see what best can be used by this very good support. Obviously we will also have a look at the other islands, the human resources for other islands and then we will go on from there.
WEBSTER: Have you been seeking help from other nations besides China and Australia to help address the doctor shortage?
AKAU'OLA: No, we have not. These are the only two, like I said, with Australia we have been working with them over the last couple of years, with them providing all these other specialist services. And of course the Australian Government has also supported visiting specialists. We have visiting specialists in from Australia, there is a cardiac team that came in last year and we are having urology teams, ophthalmology and hopefully by the end of this year there will be a plastic surgeon team. So we make use of all these things as you know because we do not have the specialist capacity to maintain them in the country, so they come in when the needs are there.
