Fiji marked the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls  this week with the government saying the day is a reminder that for too many women and girls violence is a daily reality — not a headline or a statistic.

The day also kicked off 16 days of activism against gender-based violence — a worldwide UN campaign running from November 25 to December 10.

The country’s Minister for Women, Children and Social Protection Sashi Kiran told Parliament violence against women and girls was not limited to the private sphere — “it permeates every dimension of society”.

“Addressing this issue is therefore not only a woman’s matter; it is a national priority — requiring engagement from every sector, every institution and every leader in our country.

“It manifests in various forms including physical, emotional, sexual and economic abuse as well as harmful practices such as trafficking.”

She said the cost of violence against females was estimated to be equivalent to seven percent of Fiji’s gross domestic product (GDP), affecting families, the health system, productivity and the nation’s development.

“The cost of violence is not only emotional — it is national.”

She pointed out several statistics, including that around 60 percent of Fijian women had experienced some form of violence in their lifetime; girls as young as 13 remained the most vulnerable to sexual assault; and from 2020-2024, more than 4000 child sexual offences were reported — most involving young girls.

“Our response must be survivor-centred, and above all accessible to everyone — including women and girls with disabilities and those from diverse sexual orientations and gender identities.”

In the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Western Pacific Region, more than a quarter of girls and women experience some form of intimate partner or sexual violence.

But WHO said in several Pacific island countries and areas, the prevalence of lifetime intimate partner violence is as high as one in two women.

WHO’s western Pacific director, Dr Saia Ma’u Piukala, said governments and communities must use data to drive stronger policies, scale up prevention efforts, and invest in health system readiness, “so every girl is protected and woman is empowered”.

WHO said while the numbers were grim, a survey on “health system readiness to respond to interpersonal violence” pointed to an encouraging policy environment.

“Many countries are integrating strategies to prevent violence against women and girls into their national multisectoral plans, and acknowledging the key role that health systems must play in tackling this societal problem.

“However, the survey also highlights challenges in implementing these strategies.”

It is not all bad news in the region though — Cook Islands police have reported a decrease in the number of assault cases against women this year.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Surveillance and better vaccine coverage is needed to prevent another measles outbreak in the Pacific, says the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Western Pacific regional director.

Dr Saia Ma’u Piukala said many children missed out on routine vaccinations — including measles and rubella — during the covid-19 pandemic.

According to WHO, measles cases jumped by 225 percent — from just over 1400 cases in 2022 to more than 5000 last year — in the Western Pacific region.

“I think the health workforce were concentrating on covid-19 vaccinations and forgot about routine vaccinations, not only for measles, but other routine immunisation schedule,” Piukala told RNZ Pacific.

“People are going back to fill the gaps.”

From 2022 to 2023, 11 countries in the Western Pacific, including Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Palau and Papua New Guinea, conducted nationwide measles and rubella vaccination campaigns.

Catch-up successful
Piukala said the catch-up campaigns had been successful.

“That will definitely reduce the risk,” he said.

“No child should get sick or die of measles.”

In 2019, Samoa had an outbreak that killed 83 people off the back of an outbreak in Auckland.

Piukala said the deaths made people understand the importance of measles and rubella vaccinations for their children.

Fiji, Guam, French Polynesia and New Caledonia are the only countries or territories that have local testing capacity for measles, with most nations sending samples to Melbourne for testing.

Piukala said WHO plans for Samoa, the Cook Islands, and the Solomon Islands to have testing capacity by 2025.

“The PCR machines that were made available in Pacific Island countries during the covid pandemic can also be used to detect other respiratory viruses, including the flu, LSV, and measles and rubella.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A covid-19 positive patient is being flown to New Zealand from Fiji today despite an earlier decision by the Ministry of Health to decline the transfer.

The infected patient from Fiji is being flown to Auckland for hospital treatment.

It is reported the person involved is a high-profile staff member employed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) currently working in the covid-ravaged country.

The patient was due to board a special flight that was set to arrive in Auckland this afternoon.

The transfer comes after the Ministry of Health said earlier this week that the formal request had been declined on clinical grounds due to ICU being at full capacity.

The fluidity of the situation at the metro-Auckland DHB ICUs determined this treatment can be provided according to the Ministry of Health.

The receiving hospital is yet to be confirmed, and will be determined by the treatment required by the patient and the capacity in the respective ICUs.

There are appropriate isolation and infection prevention and control plans in place at all the metro-DHB hospitals to accommodate this patient, according to the Ministry of Health.

Any patient coming from Fiji, or any other country, is covered by protocols to protect against the risk of spread of covid-19.

New Zealand’s Ministry of Health said strong protocols were in place to manage the risk of transferring the patient.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Facebook has today launched a public education campaign to help people in five Pacific Island countries and territories learn how to identify and combat health-related misinformation.

The locations and languages are Wallis & Futuna (French), New Caledonia (French), Tonga (English and Tongan), Solomon Islands (English and Solomon Islands Pijin), and Cook Islands (English).

The campaign, which follows an earlier launch in Samoa, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, will run for five weeks and includes graphics and videos.

The content is designed to encourage three key behaviours by Facebook users:

• Awareness – Be informed that misinformation exists
• Investigation – Find out more to confirm if the information is indeed false
• Action – Visit the local health authority to get accurate information

Mia Garlick, director of public policy for Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Islands, says: “One of our commitments is to connect people to reliable information, and give people the tools to make informed decisions about the information they see on Facebook.

“We are extending our efforts to reach more people across the Pacific, ensuring they can easily compare what they see with official public health resources.

“We will continue to work with health experts including the World Health Organisation (WHO), and local partners, to make sure that we have the right policies in place to reduce the spread of harmful covid-19 and covid-19 vaccine misinformation on our platform.”

Throughout the pandemic, Facebook has worked closely with WHO to direct people to authoritative covid-19 information, and to do more to identify and take action to remove incorrect claims about the virus.

The campaigns can be found at:
Wallis & Futuna (French)
New Caledonia (French)
Tonga (English)
Tonga (Tongan)
Solomon Islands (English)
Solomon Islands (Solomon Islands Pijin)
Cook Islands (English)

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By Max Towle, Worldwatch reporter of RNZ News

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says New Zealand has been world-leading in its response to the covid-19 coronavirus pandemic.

But at the same time, a top official for the organisation is warning against complacency.

Western Pacific incident manager Abdi Mahamud said the WHO had been particularly impressed with how the government had communicated, and how people had observed social restrictions.

READ MORE: Al Jazeera coronavirus live updates – Infections top 3 million – a third in the US

“Our view of New Zealand’s response has been one of the strongest in the world, and there’s a lot that global communities can learn from the response,” he said.

“There are aspects of New Zealand’s response that can be easily replicated in all countries, regardless of geography and resources.”

But in response to the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s comment that New Zealand has eliminated the virus, Dr Mahamud warned the country must not become complacent.

“Elimination? Every country has a different connotation with [the word], but what we understand is that the prime minister means a reduction in the undetected chain of transmission in the community,” he said.

‘We have to be cautious’
“But we have to be very cautious moving forward so we don’t fall into a sense of ‘we did it’.”

Dr Mahamud said until a safe and effective vaccine was developed, some social distancing requirements must continue.

“We believe in the New Zealand government’s strategy, that is based on science and evidence.”

He said that on May 7, Minister for Health David Clark would appear in the WHO’s weekly videoconference to discuss the challenges New Zealand had faced.

He also urged New Zealand to support Pacific nations, should there be significant outbreaks in those countries.

“We would like to request New Zealand support to other developing countries, particularly the Pacific Islands,” he said.

“There are Pacific nations with limited resources and fragile health systems, so the deployment of senior [health] officers and financial support [would be helpful].”

742 complaints over businesses
RNZ News reports there were 742 complaints of businesses not complying with the rules on the first day of alert level 3, most over the lack of social distancing.

In this afternoon’s Covid-19 media conference, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and the Ministry for Primary Industries will be following up on the complaints.

In addition, police recorded 104 breaches in the first 18 hours of alert level 3 – of those 21 were prosecutions and 71 were warnings, Ardern said.

She said the rules are in place for a reason and that it only takes one person to potentially affect many.

“We will not hesitate to take firmer measures if required.”

The Health Ministry has revealed there were just two new cases of Covid-19 reported in the past 24 hours.

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said the two new cases were made up of one confirmed and one probable case.

The total number of confirmed cases is now 1126, with 348 probable cases, for a combined total of 1474. Dr Bloomfield said an earlier probable case had now been reclassified as confirmed.

There have been no further deaths.

Six people are in hospital, but none of them are in intensive care.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

PACIFIC PANDEMIC DIARY: By David Robie, self-isolating in Auckland under New Zealand’s Covid-19 lockdown as part of a Pacific Media Watch series.

Donald Trump’s sabre-rattling freeze on funding for the World Health Organisation at a time when many countries are pulling together for a global response to the coronavirus pandemic has surely earned him the epithet of the “world’s chief covidiot”.

The US President’s efforts at deflecting the blame for his country’s national public health crisis by pointing the finger at WHO and announcing that Washington would pull funding as the largest donor has shocked the world, triggering widespread condemnation from leaders and public health experts.

The impact of this shock decision is bound to be felt in the Pacific region with some countries and territories clinging precariously to their Covid-19-free status, while others – such as the US territory Guam, New Caledonia and French Polynesia – have already become hotspots.

READ MORE: NZ media warn of desperate times ahead

American funding to WHO provided more than 15 percent of the international body’s 2018-19 budget of $4.4 billion.

While Richard Horton, the editor-in-chief of the Lancet medical journal, denounced Trump’s decision as “a crime against humanity” and an “appalling betrayal” of every scientist, health worker and citizen – and of global solidarity, the second largest WHO donor, Microsoft’s Bill Gates of the Gates Foundation, described the move “as dangerous as it sounds”.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says it is “not the time” to cut funding or to question errors.

“Once we have finally turned the page on this epidemic, there must be a time to look back fully to understand how such a disease emerged and spread its devastation so quickly across the globe, and how all those involved reacted to the crisis,” he said.

Three-month review
Rather pointless right now when most countries are in crisis.

Trump ordered the blocking of funds pending a three-month review of WHO’s role in allegedly “severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus”.

The president claimed that the pandemic could have been contained “with very little death” if the UN agency had accurately assessed the situation in China, where the virus outbreak began in the city of Wuhan late last year. He accused of WHO of having put too much faith in Beijing.

However, the US president had in the early stages regularly downplayed the dangers of this virus that has killed more than 128,000 people and infected more than 2 million worldwide, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.

He had declared it was all “under control” and as late as March 27 praised President Xi Jinping for China’s handling of the crisis. According to Politico, he tweeted or addressed rallies 15 times in praise of China.

The US has now become the hardest hit country with the highest death toll of more than 30,000 and 630,000 confirmed cases.

Ironically, the Johns Hopkins University figures – regarded as the most reliable – have been criticised for obscuring the degree of impact in the US by breaking up US death toll figures into individual state tallies.

Warning signs for PNG
The warning signs are there for countries such as Papua New Guinea which has already drawn alarm signals from Human Rights Watch, saying that a serious outbreak there would be “a catastrophe”. (Just two “cases” so far, one a foreign mineworker who was repatriated back to Australia and the other a woman in East New Britain who turned out to be a false alarm after a provincial lockdown).

“Even before the coronavirus pandemic, the fragile health system in Papua New Guinea was underfunded and overwhelmed, with high rates of malaria, tuberculosis, and diabetes among its population of more than eight million,” wrote an HRW associate director, Georgie Bright.

“Access to hospitals is extremely limited, with 80 percent of the population living outside urban centres. Prime Minister James Marape has acknowledged the country has only 500 doctors, less than 4000 nurses, and around 5000 beds in hospitals and health centres.

“The country reportedly has only 14 ventilators.”

However, Bright also acknowledged that hopefully there might be mitigating factors, such as large sections of its rural population living in remote mountainous villages in the highlands : “It could be that PNG will be spared the scale of the pandemic seen elsewhere such as Wuhan, a dense urban area with a mobile and older population.”

Vanuatu (population almost 300,000) is another country with serious concerns of “disaster” with a possible outbreak, but Fiji (pop. About 900,000) – although it has 19 confirmed cases so far – seems to be holding its own with the success of its fever clinics that have tested more than 120,000 people in the capital of Suva so far.

Timor-Leste is also on the watch list with an eight cases so far and a furore over the sacking of the acting health minister.

Pushed into the background by the relentless sad statistics and doomsday stories around the globe are some other stories in the Pacific that normally struggle to get an airing in mainstream media.

Growing concern for West Papua
Just over the porous 820 km jungle border from Papua New Guinea, are the two Melanesian provinces Papua and West Papua ruled under protest by Indonesia. Collectively known as West Papua, the region has become a growing public health concern as Indonesia appears headed for disaster.

The coronavirus pandemic is “exacerbating tensions” in West Papua and exposing the “shortcomings” of Jakarta government policy, laments a conflict watchdog group.

The Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC) says President Joko Widodo’s government needs to urgently appoint a senior official to “focus exclusively on Papua” province to ensure that immediate humanitarian needs and longer term issues are effectively addressed.

It has appealed for greater transparency and more support for the local Papuan administrations in coping with the spread of the virus.

“The virus arrived in Papua as tensions left over from deadly communal violence in August-September 2019 remained high, and pro-independence guerrillas from the Free Papua Organisation (Organisasi Papua Merdeka, OPM) were intensifying attacks in the central highlands.

“Papua’s major faultlines – indigenous vs migrant, central control vs local autonomy, independence movement vs the state – affected both how Papuans interpreted the pandemic and the central government’s response.”

The pandemic has also added new complications such as how many Papuans are “already portraying the virus as being brought in by non-Papuan migrants and the military”. As a result, “hostility and suspicion” are growing.

‘Jakarta six’ episode
Another episode happened in Jakarta this week that ought to have focused attention on the ongoing human rights struggle for Papuans yet was barely noticed in mainstream media in Australia and New Zealand.

A hearing about the trial of six Papuan activists – known as the “Jakarta Six” – will now be held online or long-distance amid the enforcement of large scale social restrictions to contain the coronavirus pandemic.

The accused – five men and a woman – are Paulus Suryanta Ginting, Charles Kossay, Ambrosius Mulait, Isay Wenda, Anes Tabuni and Arina Elopere. They were arrested by police for flying the Morning Star independence flag during a protest action demanding a referendum for Papua in front of the State Palace on August 28 last year.

The hearings into the alleged makar (treason, subversion, rebellion) case have been changed since the coronavirus pandemic has hit Indonesia, particularly in Jakarta.

The team of lawyers defending the six had earlier asked the panel of judges to postpone the hearing. However, the judges refused the request but changed the mechanism for the hearing so that the defendants can remain in jail for the trial.

NZ’s ‘long road back’
Back in New Zealand, the four-week national lockdown has been going encouragingly well, it is into its last week with the debate now moving on to the “long road back” for the economy by relaxing controls – a little – and the manner of how this would be achieved. A decision will be announced next Monday.

The Ministry of Health statistics show just nine deaths so far – mostly elderly rest home patients – with a fairly stable 1386 cases, just 20 new ones announces yesterday that are eclipsed by the rate of recoveries, now up to 728.

The last of 18,000 stranded German and European visitors and tourists seeking repatriation have now returned to their countries. The final Lufthansa Airbus flight had a sole incoming passenger – an Easter Bunny named Jacinda in honour of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern who has gained admiration for her courageous leadership, clear communication and kindness.

Not to mention the prime minister, her cabinet and civil service managers’ voluntary gesture of a six-month 20 percent pay cut in solidarity with the “struggle that many New Zealanders are facing”.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pacific Media Watch

New Zealand is providing NZ$1 million to the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Suva, Fiji, to support its Pacific Action Plan for Covid-19 coronavirus preparedness and response.

Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has announced that New Zealand is partnering with countries in the Pacific to ensure they are prepared for, and able to respond to the global threat of the infectious disease.

“There are currently no confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the Pacific, but it is vital that New Zealand is working hard in partnership with our neighbours to ensure the region is safe and as prepared as can be,” Peters said.

READ MORE: NZ foreign minister delays Pacific mission

However, Fiji health authorities reported today that there were four people suspected of being infected by the virus were in isolation and Tonga also reported a suspected case.

New Zealand is jointly funding the WHO Pacific regional coronavirus response plan, in partnership with Australia, in response to requests for assistance from Pacific island countries.

The New Zealand government has also signed a contract with the Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR) for countries in the South Pacific to send samples of potential Covid-19 cases to ESR’s laboratory in New Zealand for testing, free of charge.

Supporting the realm countries has been another focus of New Zealand’s preparations related to coronavirus.

“In partnership with the WHO, New Zealand has deployed a team to Cook Islands to support Covid-19 preparedness, with further joint trips planned to Tokelau and Niue from next week,” Peters said.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade media release and RNZ News.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz