The meaning of pipe dream is an unattainable or fanciful hope or scheme. More simply defined it means a hope or plan you have, you know will never really happen. That is what the ambitions for district hospitals are.

Districts have talked about their ambitious plans to establish hospitals. The leaders of the district are looking to provide the best healthcare for their people. For now, it is just a pipe dream.

This is because of a shortage of doctors. This will hinder the establishment of a hospital in each district.

Full points have to be given to the Minister of Health, Valasi Tafito Selesele for his honesty in stating why people of this nation will not be able to access medical services in their districts.

He said multiple requests from districts to establish hospitals in their constituency need to be reviewed.

Valasi stressed the lack of manpower in the medical field to service district hospitals for constituencies that proposed such facilities.

In January this year, the Dean of the Oceania University of Medicine, Professor Asiata Dr. Satupaitea Viali said there is a need for 100 more doctors in the health system to fill the current shortage in the public health service.

According to the Ministry of Health in Samoa, there are about 120 doctors currently working in Samoa. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), Samoa needs about 200 doctors minimum to cater for the number of people in Samoa, with an ideal ratio of 1 doctor to 1,000 people.

Since the beginning of OUM in 2002 and the beginning of the National University of Samoa School of Medicine in February 2014, these two local medical schools have added more than 50 doctors to the current pool of 120 doctors in Samoa, putting out seven to 10 medical graduates per year.

If OUM and SOM graduate 10 plus doctors per year for the next 10 years, we will have the 100 doctors that we need by 2033. There are currently about 50 Samoa students in the NUS SOM program and 19 OUM Samoan students in the OUM Program.

If all these students graduate as doctors in the next six years, we will have another 69 doctors. There will be seven new doctors graduating from NUS SOM at the end of 2023. Fiji National University and other medical schools in New Zealand or Australia could contribute two or three per year

That was just a basic calculation to show the gravity of the situation we are in when it comes to labour shortage. It is all around and in most specialist fields. The solution to this is very simple and has been staring the government right in the face for years.

The government should focus on education and ensuring all children can finish high school and provide a pathway to quality tertiary education, a lot of problems faced by the nation could be solved.

Samoa needs doctors, nurses, engineers, qualified people in the agricultural sector and other fields that require tertiary qualified and experienced people.

Education benefits not just the individual, but society as a whole.  An educated population are more environmentally conscious, have healthier habits, and have a higher level of civic participation.

Two issues need to be looked at. First is access to education and ensuring that all Samoan children can finish secondary education and get the opportunity to go to tertiary institutions.

Secondly, there should be more scholarships for higher studies. Agriculture is the future and food security will play a vital role in years to come, yet students do not want to get their hands dirty.

But before we can reach there, the first step is to eliminate the educational inequality that exists in this nation.

Educational inequality is the unequal distribution of academic resources, including but not limited to school funding, qualified and experienced teachers, books, and technologies, to socially excluded communities. These communities tend to be historically disadvantaged and oppressed.

The government should make all teachers civil servants guaranteeing better pay and ensuring the profession is always well-staffed.

Have budgetary allocations so parents do not have to pay exorbitant fees. How many children in Samoa end up becoming street vendors or carwash employees because their parents cannot afford to send them to school?

The other area to look at is filling the gaps in schools with qualified teachers. The basics from the primary school level should be set right so when children progress, they do with the skill sets which are learnt at each level.

If the government addresses education, hospitals in each district will not be a pipe dream.