Health Minister Dr Ifereimi Waqainabete. [File Photo]

Health Minister Dr Ifereimi Waqainabete says Opposition MP Lenora Qereqeretabua misled the parliament by saying pap smear tests were not available for women.

Qereqeretabua had told the parliament that since last November Fijian women have not been able to get a pap smear.

She went on to claim that this is because the laboratories did not have the filters to carry out proper tests and the reason behind this was that the government did not pay its bills to a certain supplier.

However, Dr Waqainabete says it is a lie as Fiji has several ways of doing cervical cancer testing.

He clarified that the new machine bought by the government ran into problems during the time of guarantee and the NZ based company had to repair it.

“But in that meantime – we used the manual method. Apart from that, we used VIA but we also used colposcopy and biopsy – so that women were not compromised during that time. And the machine has been fixed and the ThinPrep for this will be available by August.”

Dr Waqainabete told the parliament that the Ministry has also started remodelling its health service provision based on the universal health coverage.