In Brief

Dr Jimmie Rodgers new Director-General of SPC
On January 23 2006, Dr Jimmie Rodgers took over the leadership of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) from his widely acclaimed predecessor, Lourdes Pangelinan.

Dr Rodgers was originally a medical practitioner specialising in anaesthesia. He also holds a Masters degree in health administration. Before joining SPC in 1996 as Director of Programmes in Noumea, he held the position of Under-Secretary for Health Care in the Solomon Islands’ Ministry of Health and Medical Services. Dr Rodgers moved to Suva in 1998 to head SPC’s Suva Regional Office as Deputy Director-General. He was named Senior Deputy Director-General in 2000, a position he held up to the time of his appointment as Director-General.

SPC’s new Public Health Programme Manager
Dr Thierry Jubeau was recently appointed Public Health Programme Manager at SPC. He succeeds Dr Mark Jacobs, who left SPC in December 2004. For the past eight years, Dr Jubeau, who will begin work at SPC in January 2006, held the position of Coordinating Physician at the Southern Province Department of Health and Social Affairs (DPASS Sud) in New Caledonia, where he was in charge of the Province’s public health services. Before that he supervised medical and social welfare teams at the grassroots level and in health clinics for 10 years, working independently, sometimes in isolated areas, in direct contact with New Caledonia’s Pacific island communities. During his many years of experience, his fields of interest and work have successively covered a wide range of disciplines: child and adolescent health, women’s health, STDs and HIV, tuberculosis, tropical diseases, field epidemiology, environmental health, handicaps, emergency medicine, planning, hospital management, social welfare and even health networks. Dr Jubeau continues to be very attentive to the needs of communities and gives a great deal of importance to respecting cultural values. He plans “to serve the inhabitants of our region to the best of his abilities”. He also plans to strengthen the ties and coordination with the various partners in the area of public health, both at the regional and national levels.