Minister for Health, Doctor Ifereimi Waqainabete. [Source: File Photo]

Health centres around the country will have an assigned doctor from this month.

The Health Ministry says it has achieved one of its goals by ensuring that each health centre has a doctor.

This is part of the long-awaited target and it has now been achieved as over 1,000 doctors are now employed by the Ministry.

Minister for Health, Doctor Ifereimi Waqainabete says never before has Fiji been able to have doctors stationed at all health centres.

“All the Health Centers in Fiji as of March this year will have a medical officer.” We went through a period when we were young doctors when there were not enough doctors, so there was a nurse practitioner program that was rolled out, so we have very senior nurses that went back to do a one year course to be a nurse practitioner.”

Waqainabete says experienced nurses who have been managing some health centres will now be able to serve in nursing stations and provide the much-needed service.

“A lot of these stations require our nurses to act like nurse practitioners. They need to stitch, they need to be able to give an IV line, sometimes they have to deliver a baby in the middle of the night, sometimes they have to do procedures that sometimes something they are not very familiar with.”

Doctor Waqainabete says the Ministry is aligned with Sustainable Development Goal 3, which talks about providing access to good health to every person.