Fiji\u2019s health system is expected to face increasing pressure as HIV and tuberculosis (TB) cases continue to rise, according to health officials.<\/p>\n
HIV Vertical Transmission Elimination country lead and member of the National HIV response taskforce Dr Priya Kaur said both diseases required long-term treatment and would involve all levels of the healthcare workforce in the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will see both disproportionately like we\u2019ve never seen before in the next two to five years,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be so much that it\u2019s going to be every healthcare worker\u2019s problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last year, Fiji recorded 640 cases of TB, and 41 per cent of TB-HIV co-infection.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no extra workforce that we can bring up to do just HIV and TB alone. The existing workforce will have to look after it.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said doctors across multiple specialties, including general practitioners, paediatricians and private practitioners, would need to manage HIV and TB cases as demand increases.<\/p>\n
Dr Kaur said the Ministry of Health was working to strengthen integrated health systems, including improved referral pathways and the use of digital tools such as QR-based systems to support healthcare workers.<\/p>\n
She stated that the goal was to improve coordination between public and private health services and ensure patients received timely and continuous care.<\/p>\n
She said a coordinated national response was needed as the number of infections increased and the health system adapted to long-term management of both diseases.<\/p>\n
Dr Kaur said the existing workforce would need to manage the growing burden, as there was limited capacity to create separate specialised teams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fiji\u2019s health system is expected to face increasing pressure as HIV and tuberculosis (TB) cases continue to rise,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377884,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-377883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}