Health is priority for the Coalition Govt – Biman Prasad

Health is a priority for the Coalition Government.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Biman Prasad highlighted this during the fijivillage Straight Talk With Vijay Narayan after being questioned on their plans of resolving the issues that were raised by the Chief of Surgeon at CWM Hospital Dr Josese Turagava earlier this month.

Professor Prasad says actions have been taken by increasing the budget with specific allocations so that new equipment can be purchased to provide better services.

He says when Dr Turagava talked about the population increase in the country, the falling of ceilings, and the shortage of beds, it showed the quality of service provided by the previous leadership during the past 15 to 16 years.

The Deputy Prime Minister says nobody in the previous government, including the people in charge, was prepared to talk about it, even though they were taking pictures of broken windows.

He says after the announcement of the National Budget, they realised that nothing was done to maintain all the health centres and hospitals nationwide.

He says issues were faced for the past 16 years, but people are still left with their questions unanswered.

The Deputy Prime Minister says one of the reasons they are having the National Development Plan for the next 3 years is to improve the health service delivery experience for patients.