The need to consider raising the retirement age for some cadres of health professionals, redeployment to high-need areas, and increasing the intake of health professional students is underway.
This came to light after the Ministry of Health highlighted their Fiji Health Adaptation Plan which can be a guideline.
They say improving the human resources for health is a multi-faceted problem that will be addressed by the Health Ministry through multi-dimensional approaches.
The Ministry of Health also highlighted according to the plan the remuneration of staff remains an important concern, Ministry staff surveys have identified that working conditions (infrastructure maintenance and improvement) and continuous professional development are high-rated concerns.
They add Fijian health system has established an effective allocation of roles and responsibilities for the management of environmentally determined and climate-sensitive health conditions down to the Divisional and Sub-divisional levels.
The Health Adaptation Plan says the National Disaster Management Office was noted to have delivered effective training following Tropical Cyclone Winston on disaster risk management; however, such efforts have been followed by only ad hoc and episodic capacity building of the health workforce.
According to the plan,there has been a longstanding commitment to delivering climate change education by some (but not all) institutions that train health professionals, such as the College of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences at Fiji National University.
It adds there is considerable scope to strengthen and join up these efforts.
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