On Friday 08 January 2010, the Port Moresby office of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) provided 2220 water quality testing tablets and related supplies to Mr Enoch Posanai, Executive Manager of Public Health at the Papua New Guinea (PNG) National Department of Health, to help fight the cholera outbreak. 

These supplies will enable the National Department of Health to carry out more than 1700 water chlorination level tests and 500 water pH tests.

Contaminated water and food are the main routes of transmission of cholera, which continues to spread in PNG. National response teams have been doing water quality testing in the outbreak zones of the affected provinces since the outbreak started last year. These tests have assisted with the overall control efforts so far.

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Malaria in the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu has been dramatically reduced through an effective control strategy, a major regional meeting in Tonga has heard.

Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) public health director Bill Parr told the 39th meeting of the Committee of the Representatives of Governments and Administrations (CRGA) of SPC in Nuku’alofa this week there were 50,000 fewer cases of Malaria in the Solomon Islands in 2008 compared with 2003.

He said an effective prevention and control strategy comprising of long lasting insecticide treated bednet distribution, focal point indoor residual spraying, early diagnosis and treatment and active case detection has had dramatic impact on the annual incidence rate of malaria in both the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.

The annual incidence rate (which is a measure of number of confirmed cases of malaria per 1,000 population) has been reduced from 198 /1,000 to 84/1,000 in the Solomon Islands over the five year period ending December 2008, while in Vanuatu it has decreased from 74/1,000 to 14 / 1,000 in the same period.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) are supporting Fiji's response to the H1N1 influenza pandemic, with financial help from Australia and New Zealand. 

During the past two weeks, WHO donated 157,000 capsules of Tamiflu to Fiji. Approximately 10,000 additional capsules have also been sent to Fiji by SPC. Pandemic H1N1 influenza is a mild illness in most persons; therefore WHO recommends giving Tamiflu only to patients with risk factors for severe influenza. These supplies provide Fiji with enough antiviral medication to treat approximately 2% of the population.

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Next week (from Monday 23 to Friday 27 February), the third regional training course for Global Salmonella Surveillance (GSS) in the Pacific Island region will be organised in Guam to address specifically the North Pacific region.

‘Two courses were organised previously in the South Pacific region, in Fiji Islands in 2006 and Papua New Guinea in 2008,’ says Dr Justus Benzler, Communicable Disease Surveillance Specialist at the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC).

’With these three sub-regional courses, more than 100 microbiology technicians and public health practitioners/epidemiologists from 19 Pacific Island countries and territories* will have equipped themselves with the knowledge and skills to detect different types of Salmonella organisms (which can be the cause of foodborne diseases) and to investigate and better control outbreaks of foodborne diseases, in particular those of typhoid fever.’