Transcript
There was controversy when Samoa approved a cigarette factory for Apia last month.
The opposition MP Aeau Peniamina Leavai says the decision to grant a licence to a foreign company to run the factory goes against the whole message of healthy living and combatting NCDs.
But the Director General of the Health Ministry, Leausa Dr Take Naseri says the government won't stand against people's right to run a business.
He says education and awareness is important and the firm will be paying significant taxes.
"They have their own rights to set up a business just like any business. It's just that I feel our people should be well informed of the risks and we have a lot of taxation going on."
Other Government MPs have said people make a decision to smoke or not and it's not important where the product is being made.
But Leausa did admit that people aren't always completely free to say no - to such things as sugar-filled fizzy drinks - when the price is so low.
"Talk about these fizzy drinks, there's so many fizzy drinks, and you know we can look at it now and the bottle of water that's produced locally is much more expensive than a can of soda. So these are the issues on trade that we feel indirectly impacts the choices of the people."
The Secretary of Cook Islands' Health Ministry, Elizabeth Iro, says education is key and the best time for intervention is at childhood.
"Looking at programmes, school lunch programmes, doing physical health examinations in the school, rolling out programmes that could be in collaboration with the ministry of education, not just the health ministry taking charge. And also the minisry of agriculture where local food sources are going to lead the push to go local."
Ms Iro says she hopes that in 15 years the difference will be noted among the younger generation in terms of NCDs.
Health directors are here in Auckland sharing lessons learned and those from Fiji say there's a lot of new thinking about a holistic approach to health care, and getting the whole community involved.
Dr Ifreimi Waqainabete, the President of the Fiji Medical Association, says that idea harkens back to some of Fiji's ancient practices.
"It's been there for thousands of years but we frowned upon it because we learned about this western medicine. I'm not saying we say yes to traditional medicine as a whole but what I'm saying is that there's been a process of the community being part of the healing process and medicine is now realising that the healing process is a multidisciplinary team approach."
Dr Waqainabete says despite that, Fiji needs good doctors and needs to retain them, with good incentives. But he says the payment has improved greatly over the years.
The CEO of the Pasifika Medical Association, Debbie Sorensen, says it's not just about the money, and medicine is a calling more than a job, but it can be tough to get the balance right in smaller island countries.
"The issue I think in the Pacific is the volume of the health workers we have and how many doctors we have related to the health budget and the health spend. So in small economies it's very challenging to have the right size health budget and the right size workforce."
Debbie Sorensen says she is heartened by an increase in interest in Pasifika students in New Zealand getting into medicine and she hopes some of them will be interested in also working in the Pacific.
