- FIJI ENVOY PRESENTS CREDENTIALS TO KING OF JORDAN – His Majesty, King Abdullah II ibn Al Hussein of the royal court of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordon has commended Fiji’s substantial contribution to peace keeping duties.
2. VETERINARY ASSOCIATION LOOKS AT WAYS OF TACKLING VET SHORTAGE IN FIJI – The Fiji Veterinary Association (FVA) is looking at establishing a veterinary school in the country to tackle the overall shortage of veterinarians in Fiji and in other Pacific island countries.
3. JORDAN PROPOSES MEDICAL COOPERATION WITH FIJI – His Majesty, King Abdullah II ibn Al Hussein of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordon has offered to assist Fiji in tele-medicine.
4. MINISTER URGES WOMEN TO MAXIMISE TALENTS -The Minister for Social Welfare, Women and Poverty Alleviation Dr Jiko Luveni yesterday officially opened two new resource centres in Nabaka and Nacuru villages in the province of Rewa.
5. TUI NOCO CALLS ON MEN TO SUPPORT WOMEN PROJECTS – The Tui Noco Ratu Isoa Damudamu yesterday attended the opening of the new resource centre at Nacuru village in Rewa officiated by Minister for Social Welfare, Women and Poverty Alleviation Dr Jiko Luveni.
1 FIJI ENVOY PRESENTS CREDENTIALS TO KING OF JORDAN
His Majesty, King Abdullah II ibn Al Hussein of the royal court of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordon has commended Fiji’s substantial contribution to peace keeping duties.
Fiji’s acknowledgement in peace keeping efforts were made when our Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, His Excellency Ravindran Robin Nair, presented his credentials on 2 September 2012 to His Majesty King Abdullah II.
His Majesty, King Abdullah II acknowledged Fiji’s substantial contribution to the peace-keeping forces in the region for many years and also Fiji’s exceptionally high level of positive contribution to international affairs.
As Fiji’s first non-resident Ambassador to the Hashemite Kingdom, Ambassador Nair was also given the opportunity to inspect a guard of honour on the lawns of the Raghadan Palace in the capital Amman.
Following the presentation of credentials, King Abdullah and Fiji’s envoy to the United Arab Emirates discussed various issues of interest for the two countries.
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2 VETERINARY ASSOCIATION LOOKS AT WAYS OF TACKLING VET SHORTAGE IN FIJI
The Fiji Veterinary Association (FVA) is looking at establishing a veterinary school in the country to tackle the overall shortage of veterinarians in Fiji and in other Pacific island countries.
The shortage of veterinarians locally is an issue being discussed at length at the 15th Commonwealth Veterinary Association Regional Conference underway in Nadi.
Currently, only the French territories in the Pacific Island Countries Territories (PICTS) have ample veterinarians looking at the needs of the livestock sector and animal welfare.
FVA president, Dr Robin Yarrow said the long term answer to our need for veterinarians is to train them locally.
While Dr Yarrow said having a vet school here would be a very big undertaking in need investment, the benefits it would have for Fiji and the neighboring island nations would undoubtedly be immense.
Reiterating the comments made by His Excellency the President Ratu Epeli Nailatikau (at the opening of the conference this week) that “producing our own veterinarians will also be a better way of using the resources required”, Dr Yarrow said locally trained vets would be much more familiar with Fiji’s conditions.
“The school will also benefit from partnerships from other vet schools, for instance, the veterinary school in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia and the James Cook University in Queensland. They are both tropical schools and they are interested in helping because they are both here at the conference,” Dr Yarrow said.
“We can look at innovative partnerships and ways in which we can upgrade and expand our present Animal Health Diploma program at the Fiji National University to build that into a program for veterinary science. We believe it’s feasible and it’s possible.”
Dr Yarrow said that Fiji has been training doctors for over 120 years here at the Fiji School of Medicine not just for Fiji but for the region and a similar arrangement could be looked into for training veterinarians at home.
“If we do it for veterinarians, because they would be trained here in this region, they would be much more familiar with our conditions and they’d be much more likely to stay. In the process, we’d also be providing training for our neighbouring countries like Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu.
“None of those can really have their own vet school. It’s just too big a commitment and it’s too costly and they do not have the numbers. This is why a regional school makes a lot of sense,” Dr Yarrow added.
The CVA conference has also provided the FVA with a good opportunity to talk to several partners present here.
“It also lets us share that concept with other people here and some of them will get quite interested and we can get a process going whereby we can have a sort of a feasibility study done as to how big should the facility be, what are the main elements of it, what are the potential partnerships, what is the output and demand,” Dr Yarrow said.
Dr Yarrow believes that the planning and feasibility study could take a couple of years.
“New approaches such as partnerships with overseas veterinary schools are now increasingly “the way to go”, thereby building on their experience and knowledge.”
The faculty of veterinary science of the University Putra in Malaysia, participating in the CVA conference, is an example of such an institution in another developing tropical country.
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3 JORDAN PROPOSES MEDICAL COOPERATION WITH FIJI
His Majesty, King Abdullah II ibn Al Hussein of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordon has offered to assist Fiji in tele-medicine.
This follows a recent meeting between King Abdullah II and Fiji’s ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, Robin Nair.
His Excellency Nair spoke about Jordan’s advanced health care system as highly regarded by the World Bank as well as being the top medical tourism destination in the Middle East and North Africa.
In addition, His Majesty offered to help Fiji in tele-medicine facilities both for the automation of hospital records and the connectivity of medical advice, transfer of visuals and images from a remote location to central locations (Sisco Systems), free of charge.
He said this technology would be very relevant to a country like Fiji with its population living in so many remote islands.
King Abdullah confirmed that Jordan provides similar assistance to many countries, including the UAE with their know-how and technology.
He personally facilitated Ambassador Nair to meet his personal physician who would brief him on tele-medicine and also visit a tele-medicine facility to discuss initiating contact with the Fijian Health Minister.
Minister for Health, Dr Neil Sharma at the opening of Fiji’s first tele-medicine centre had earlier said that developments such as this will boost the skills of Fiji’s medical professionals.
“Tele-medicine allows medical personnel to use telecommunications and other forms of information technologies to provide medical assistance or clinical advice,” Minister Sharma said.
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4 MINISTER URGES WOMEN TO MAXIMISE TALENTS
The Minister for Social Welfare, Women and Poverty Alleviation Dr Jiko Luveni yesterday officially opened two new resource centres in Nabaka and Nacuru villages in the province of Rewa.
Speaking at the Nabaka centre, Minister Luveni said she is delighted to be officiating at events that celebrate the efforts and achievements of fellow women from various local communities.
She urged the women of Nabaka to maximise on their talents and develop their skills by actively participating in such development programmes.
“Our aim is to equip the 1170 registered villages with sewing machines that will help women increase economic activity and at the same time earn a living for their own households,” she said.
Nabaka Women’s Group president and advisor Keasi Suveinakama thanked the Minister and her team for such a commendable effort as this is the first time the settlement has been visited by a minister.
She said the women group have used the sewing machines donated by the Ministry to sew school uniforms for their children for the new term including traditional dresses, men’s shirts and other outfits that they now sell from the newly opened centre.
The centres add to the 45 resource centres that have opened in the last two years. These women resource centres are part of the Ministry’s assistance in women development following the increase in budget allocation for such projects.
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5 TUI NOCO CALLS ON MEN TO SUPPORT WOMEN PROJECTS
The Tui Noco Ratu Isoa Damudamu yesterday attended the opening of the new resource centre at Nacuru village in Rewa officiated by Minister for Social Welfare, Women and Poverty Alleviation Dr Jiko Luveni.
Speaking at the opening ceremony, Ratu Isoa said it was important for all men to support their women counterparts in development projects as this will enable a gender balanced economy.
“We are happy that the Government is providing such assistance to our women enabling them to have a source of income of their own,” he said.
Ratu Isoa added with such initiatives, men should be encouraged to support their women and in this case, they came together as one in helping build the resource centre that the Nacuru women will now use to produce their various products for sale.
Nacuru Women Group president Mere Wainibuli said the group is made up of ten members who were able to showcase their sewn and embroidered products yesterday.
She also thanked the Ministry for assisting them search for markets for the women to sell their products.
While opening the Nacuru centre Minister Luveni said it is the responsibility of the Ministry to assist women in their efforts to actively participate in such economic activities.
However, she further said these efforts will only be successful if both men and women of all communities equally participate and pass down knowledge to next generations.
The Nacuru women products are available for sale at the Nacuru Women Resource Centre in Nacuru Village, Noco Rewa.
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