Health workers in the North will receive about $NZ20,000 ($F27,500) worth of medical equipment and people in the division will benefit from a three-month oral health outreach courtesy of Youth With A Mission (YWAM).
YWAM volunteers arrived into the country onboard the MV YWAM KOHA which berthed at the Port of Suva, yesterday.
YWAM New Zealand managing director Marty Emmett said the idea to conduct a medical outreach in Fiji started with a meeting in Wellington with Fiji’s High Commissioner to New Zealand at that time, Filimoni Waqabaca.
“In this mission we’ll be here for three months where we’ll be doing four outreaches, three of them are two weeks duration, one about one week and all focused in the Northern division,” he said.
Mr Emmett said the YWAM team was invited by Commissioner Northern Uraia Rainima and acknowledged his support.
He said the group had aspirations to grow their service but this year would focus primarily on dental clinics.
Apart from oral health clinical outreach, Mr Emmet said the group would also be giving medical equipment to health centres in the Northern Division.
“So we got $15,000 to $NZ20,000 worth of donated supplies, about 42 different boxes of stuff that will be hand delivered to the health workers in that area when we get up there next week.”
Dr Jono Childs, a general practitioner who came with the group said they would also teach local healthcare workers on the use of the supplies which included inhalers, stitching equipment, dressings and blood pressure machines.
The medics on the vessel include two doctors and a nurse but will be joined by another three doctors and a paramedic when they reach Labasa next week.
