Improving medical care in rural settings in the Solomon Islands

For the 80 per cent of the Solomon Islands population that lives in rural areas, access to healthcare is a considerable challenge. In addition to the challenge of getting to a healthcare facility, currently a majority of doctors are clustered in Honiara, the country’s capital city. Rebalancing this problem starts with providing a pathway that will support junior doctors developing skills and knowledge to practise confidently in rural settings. Training graduate doctors in the specialty of rural medicine is a first step towards building capacity in the provinces, improving patients’ outcomes with early intervention and reducing the need for referral to the NRH.

[@keegeegeekee6836]

There is a great need to improve the rural health and medical services in the country. We need more doctors in the Provincial Hospitals with more emphasis on lifestyle medicine or preventative medicine. We still have a long way to go right at the village level and empower villagers to detect health risk and intervene early to address the risk before complications or sicknesses happen. Building big hospitals will not address or solve the current alarming rate of NCDs in the country. We need to go where the disease starts which is at home, kitchen, table, barbecue plate etc.. we need more tap turners. The focus of health services must be towards rural areas where 80 percent of the people are.

[@shirlywini4489]

Iam a Solomon islander and this is a major problem in our country but every year Solomon gov sent and spent millions of dollars sending students to study medicine abroad.yet there's not enough Doctors and nurse in the province's of our country.