There is a need for 100 more doctors in the health system to fill the current shortage in the public health service says Professor Asiata Dr. Satupaitea Viali, the Dean of the Oceania University of Medicine.

In an article, he has written for the Samoa Observer on medical training, he says there is a need to train at least 100 more doctors.

“According to the Ministry of Health in Samoa, there are about 120 doctors currently working in Samoa. According to 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,” he said.

“So, we need to train another 100 doctors to cater for Samoa. The Fiji School of Medicine which became the Fiji National University (FNU) has trained about 60 doctors currently working in Samoa, the oldest is about 80 years old and has retired.

“The output of doctors from FNU is only about two to three per year now. Only three of the Samoan FSM graduates are working overseas in New Zealand and New Caledonia, and the rest are working in Samoa in our health system in hospitals and the private sector.

Since the beginning of OUM in 2002 and the beginning of the NUS SOM 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-10 medical graduates per year.

“The dream of our leaders to set up medical training facilities in Samoa to provide doctors, has been realised as I looked at these numbers,” said Asiata.

“We are also now training medical students from the Solomon Islands, Cook Islands, Tuvalu, Tonga and the Pacific region. Last year, SOM graduated its first Solomon Island doctor. Several doctors from Tonga and Tuvalu have graduated.”

The PNG Medical School had graduated about 10 doctors with nine working in Samoa and one in New Zealand. Samoa had stopped sending medical students in the 1990s to PNG due to safety concerns.

Otago had graduated over 20 graduates with only four working in Samoa. Auckland Medical School graduated two doctors, and both are working as senior doctors in Samoa.

“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 NUS SOM program and 19 OUM Samoa students in the OUM Program,” Asiata said.

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