20 years of regional health surveillance network

Transcript

DR SALANIETA SAKETA: I think it's a real milestone and you can feel the excitement knowing that the network has survived this far for 20 years.

SELA JANE AHOLELEI:   And what are some success stories that will be acknowledged this week?

SS:  The success stories has been that the services that the network has been able to support countries in the national level, in the regional level. As of today, the network has six services to offer the countries and that is the PAC NET, which is the communication service. 20 years on, there have been almost nine hundred health professionals connected to PAC NET and not just people from the region, but people from international countries in Europe and also from The United States of America, so there would be interest for people to kind of link up to the network. Also, we've established what we call EpiNet rapid response team and we have teams on a national level where they can respond directly to an outbreak or any public health challenge in that country and most recent there have been countries that have been affected with dengue and zika

SJA:  There will also be challenges that are common to all countries in the Pacific that will be raised at this meeting.

SS:  Many of the challenges that we face is the willingness of countries to share information on a timely manner. A lot of Pacific Island countries are very much dependent on tourism and all that and so often there is a hesitation on that part, to share information willingly. Also, the challenges around particularly the laboratories support do not usually have the adequate funding to be able to refer and even the craftmanship and actually the partners particularly the Pacific community and the governors have pitched in in many occasions to support funding in this regard. So that is generally what we see as major challenges in the region