There are 815 doctors in Fiji and this is not bad for a country with over 900,000 people says Health Minister Dr Ifereimi Waqainabete.

When asked by FBC News if this was enough to cater for the growing number of Fijians or if there was a need to recruit more doctors, Dr Waqainabete says this number is better than a decade ago.

He says the reason being is that Fiji’s population hasn’t grown very much.

“We’ve increased by four times the number of doctors within the last twenty years – with majority of these increasing happening over the last five years. Within the last four to five years we’ve gone from 400 doctors to 815 doctors. So you can see that the government has made very significant contributions towards increasing the critical mass of doctors and really decreased that shortage that we had before.”

Dr Waqainabete says they’re grateful for FNU’s Nursing Practitioner program that assisted the Ministry when there was a shortage of doctors a few years ago however, there are more doctors now.

He also highlighted that apart from doctors there are also more medical officials now compared to before.

The Minister adds that while they continue to absorb more Doctors from tertiary institutions, they’re working on enhancing the quality of doctors in the country.