A significant boost in the 2025-2026 National Budget empowers Fiji\u2019s health ministry to drastically enhance public health infrastructure and medical services.<\/p>\n
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The Ministry has been allocated over $600 million in the new financial year, up from $540 million allocated in the current budget.<\/p>\n
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In addition, nearly $1 billion in further investments is being mobilized to build a new national hospital and upgrade other priority health facilities.<\/p>\n
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Professor Biman Prasad, states that the Health Ministry\u2019s operational budget has increased to $466 million, which will cover staff salaries, procurement of medicines, and maintenance of health facilities.<\/p>\n
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He adds that over the past two years, more than 200 maintenance and upgrade projects have been completed across health centres, nursing stations, and hospitals nationwide.<\/p>\n
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Professor Prasad says the Clinical Services Plan calls for an increase in bed capacity at the CWM Hospital from 453 to 703 beds to meet growing demand.<\/p>\n
He adds upgrades to the existing CWM Hospital are already underway, with $63 million earmarked for priority repairs, partly supported by the Australian Government.<\/p>\n
The DPM adds that subsidies for kidney dialysis services have also been raised to $4.7 million, alongside a $1.2 million allocation for new mortuary units at rural and maritime health facilities.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIn the last two budgets, we made accessibility more targeted to those earning less than $30,000 per year and further extended this to all social welfare pensioners and kidney dialysis patients. So far, we have paid $26 million. However, this will be further reviewed in the financial year to reduce abuse in the system.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Professor Prasad states that the new national hospital project is estimated to cost nearly $2 billion, with site selection and financing arrangements currently in progress.<\/p>\n <\/ins><\/div>\n A total of $117 million has been allocated in this budget for the ongoing operations and maintenance of Health Care Fiji\u2019s Lautoka and Ba hospitals under the Public-Private Partnership arrangement.<\/p>\n He says the government continues to focus on expanding tertiary healthcare services through partnerships with the private sector.<\/p>\n Professor Prasad adds that an agreement is currently under review with support from the International Finance Corporation to ensure cost-effectiveness and quality service delivery.<\/p>\n He says that under the free medical scheme, public-private partnerships continue with over 64 general and dental practitioners and medical lab providers offering free medical services to the public.<\/p>\n ~ VIA FBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A significant boost in the 2025-2026 National Budget empowers Fiji\u2019s health ministry to drastically enhance public health infrastructure and medical services. The Ministry has been allocated over $600 million in the new financial year, up from $540 million allocated in the current budget. In addition, nearly $1 billion in further investments is being mobilized […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":14125,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,175,222,208,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-fiji-news","category-latest-news","category-lifestyle","category-politics"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14124"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14126,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14124\/revisions\/14126"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}