Family planning in Fiji, 1966.

Date:
[1966]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Family planning in Fiji, 1966. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/40 (page 12)
    12. THE MEDICAL DEPARTMENT'S FiOilLY PLANNING PROGRAMME By Dr. C, H, Gurd, Director of Medical Services. The Medical Department's augmented family planning programme commenced in November I962 when His Excellency Sir Kenneth Maddocks, who was then Governor of Fiji, formally an¬ nounced in his Budget address to the Legislative Council the acceptance Ъу Government of Family Planning activities. It will Ъе appreciated that any public health service of this kind must have a sound administrative structure as well as a well organised chain of clinics. It therefore became clear that it would be necès- sary to develop considerably the departmental structure of clinics as well as the administrative side before Family Planning could become really effective. The necessity to develop other services such as maternal and child health, infectious disease control, environmental sanitation etc., was also appreciated and it was therefore decided to integrate Family Planning into the general clinical and public health services, and more especially with the maternal and child health side. It was clear that to do so effectively would require not only a complete overhaul of the machine but also its development in several important respects, Fiji is divided into four medical administrative divisions corresponding with those of the Government's general administrative machine. Each of these medical divisions are \mder the command of a senior medical officer. It was decided that the divisions should be further sub-divided into twelve sub-districts and that each sub-district should have its own sub-district head¬ quarters under the command of an experienced medical officer and assisted by a sub-district team which would include a Public Health Nursing Sister and a Health Inspector (Sanitarian). It was decided that these sub-district teams would control the staffs of the other health centres, dispensaries and nursing sta¬ tions within the boundaries of their sub-districts. This plan not only necessitated a training programme to provide staff of the right calibre for these sub-district headquarters, but it also demanded a capital works programme to replace old and inadequate dispensaries by modern health centres equipped to tackle their new functions. By the end of I965, considerable strides had been made in this reorganisation and the pattern began to stand clear of the background. Three of the new large Health Centres had been built and eleven dispensaries had either been rebuilt or modified and extended to provide the facilities required. The Health Sisters' Clinics at Suva, Lautoka and Labasa had also been modernised and extended, and two smaller health sisters clinics had been built elsewhere. However, the completion of the whole programne will take several more years.