The Ministry of Health and Medical Services’ Strategic Plan 2020-2025 aims to improve the health and well-being of all Fijians and combat the social determinants that affect people’s lives, especially the lives of the most vulnerable and marginalized. Plans exist to develop a health financing strategy and continue with the annual National Health Accounts production. As part of their commitment to universal health coverage, they continued monitoring out-of-pocket expenditure.
Decentralization has been a major focus, shifting general outpatient services to subdivisional health centers and bringing services closer to densely populated areas. Primary health care is well established with major improvements in secondary health care. The Fijian population can access services for free or at very low cost. Out-of-pocket expenditure was estimated at 21% of overall health expenditure between 2011-15. The Free Medicine Policy has had great success in ensuring the poorest households can reclaim the costs of medicines purchased. Public spending on health has increased to 3.1% of GDP during the same period while 43 % of government health spending between 2011 and 2015 was on hospital services.
