Urgent action needed by parents to prioritise their children – Cakau

With drugs and prostitution on the rise in Fiji, Minister of Women, Children, and Poverty Alleviation in the Mock Parliament who is a former Miss Hibiscus and former VitiFM personality, Ulamila Cakau stresses that the parents' priorities should be their children and how they can contribute positively to our society.

While supporting the motion in parliament today for the Government to approve an increase in the allocation for maternal health care in rural areas to improve access to quality care for pregnant women, Cakau says parents need time, diligence, and commitment and they must walk the talk on how they can teach their children values and behaviour.

She says they must get off the phone, get off social media, allow their children to read books and also have time with their children.

Minister for Rural and Maritime Development and Disaster Management in the Women’s Mock Parliament, Hosanna Kabakoro says rural maternal health care remains an area where we have massive room for improvement and in 2023, the maternal death rate in Fiji stood at 86 for every 100,000 births.

Kabakoro, who is originally from Naweni Village in Cakaudrove, says we must ensure that rural and maritime clinics are outfitted with proper emergency birthing kits and that rural health officers and staff nurses receive updated training in preconception health, prenatal health, perinatal health, breastfeeding awareness, maternal mental health both while pregnant and postpartum, emergency birthing procedures and diagnosis of birthing complications.

The Minister of Maritime Development also highlighted that we need funding to enhance infrastructures like ensuring every rural health clinic has access to a safely managed water supply.

While responding to the motion, the President of the Soqosoqo Vakamarama from Cakaudrove, Adi Salasaini Kavu says there is a need to improve maternal health funding in our rural communities.

Adi Salasaini says we are aware that Fiji’s health infrastructure and support to human resources especially nurses continues to deteriorate over the years. She says availability and easy access to a health institution in our rural villages can only be possible through dedicated improved funding towards maternal health funding to these remote and vulnerable communities.

Meanwhile, Assistant Minister of the Office of the Prime Minister, Seruwaia Beci says to prevent the death of newborn babies and children under five years, breastfeeding is vital.

Beci says a special program that is supporting this breastfeeding initiative is the crèche program which supports breastfeeding mothers in workplaces to have exclusive breastfeeding for six months.

She says the contribution from the Ministry of Women, providing food vouchers for pregnant mothers for the first two confinements which improves maternal health care falls on our SDG Goal 3, good health, that feeding prioritizes in two areas, reducing maternal mortality rate, secondly, and preventative death of newborn babies and children under five years.