Public Health

General Remarks & Links

• The (statistical) number of inhabitants per doctor is given per country in its respective section.

  The average number for Oceania is about 3,800 inhabitants / doctor.
  (Min.: New Zealand: 359; Max.: Papua New Guinea: 9,953)

• The WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific Region (WPRO) is located in Manila (Philippines), a list of WPRO Member States can be found here.

• Many of the Pacific Islands have not yet put into place the infrastructure for extensive (and expensive) electronic communication. However, there are regional networks which provide access to resources on almost all of the islands. Here are several links to these networks which we found very useful:

• Asian Pacific Islanders Women's Health (USA) - "Break the language barriers which discourage many Asian and Pacific Islander women from seeking cancer screening services. This multi-lingual site offers several languages to help Asian Pacific Islander women understand the importance of having mammograms and pap smears at regular intervals. There is information about how to make appointments and prepare for the procedures. Clinicians will find special materials they can use to personally recommend mammography and pap smears to their patients. Early detection can make a difference in treatment and survival"

• Asian Pacific Women's Information Network Center - "established in Nov. 1996, aims at promoting the information-technologies for women and women-related communication technologies in South Korea, North Korea and the Asia-Pacific region in general. APWINC is in charge of the UNESCO Chair project on communication technology for women (1998.6.-2001.6.).APWINC is in the process of constructing comprehensive cyber-information service systems for Asia-Pacific region"

• Center for Pacific Islands Studies (University of Hawaii at Manoa) - coordinates much of the Pacific-related activity at the university and is unique in two important respects. It is the only academic center in the United States that focuses solely on the islands of the Pacific and the only National Resource Center (NRC) for the region that is recognized and supported by the US Department of Education

• Centre for Pacific Studies, University of Nijmegen (The Netherlands) - established in September 1991. Developed from the former Centre for Australian and Oceanic Studies, the CPS has an interdisciplinary character and covers Oceania, including Australia and New Zealand, and Southeast Asia

• David Robie's Café Pacific - this is a forum for communication, information exchange, news, fun, chat, in short: everything you expect from a real Café; certainly one of the richest resources available, check it out

• European Centre on Pacific Issues (ECSIEP) - "set up in 1992 to improve the quantity and quality of the information flow from the Pacific to Europe. It functions as a service bureau for the Europe Pacific Solidarity Network"

• International Union for Health Promotion and Education, Southwest Pacific Regional Office

• Micronesia and South Pacific Program at the University of Oregon (USA) - established in 1988 at the University of Oregon to assist with the development of sustainable communities in the Pacific islands. The university affiliation faculty development program links the University of Oregon with the University of the South Pacific and the College of Micronesia-FSM, Palau Community College, and the College of the Marshall Islands

• OneWorld News Service: Pacific - here you find news about Oceania you won't find in your local newspaper

• Pacific Action - "provides a voice for Indigenous and Non-Indigenous People working together to re-create an independent and peaceful Pacific"

• Pacific Island Kavabowl Forum - a lively site of community interaction, links to other island sites

• Pacific Islands Development Program, East-West Center, Hawaii - to assist in providing professional services and research information to the Pacific island leaders in their collective efforts to achieve the desired social and economic development goals for the people in the Pacific islands region. PIDP conducts specific research and training activities based on the issues and problems identified and prioritized by the Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders and its Standing Committee. The Standing Committee, composed of eleven island leaders, reviews PIDP's research and training projects annually to ensure that they respond to the issues and challenges raised at each Pacific Islands Conference. This unique process ensures that PIDP's research and training programs are relevant and responsive to the needs of the Pacific island countries

• Pacific Islands Internet Resources - provided by Michael R. Ogden, this site attempts to bring together in one location a catalog (as complete as possible) of the resources available via the World Wide Web focusing on the Pacific Islands, highly recommended

• Pacific Island News and Information - provided by CocoNET Wireless, current information on the Pacific Island, great resource if you want to know what's going on in the region

• Pacific Journalism Review - "South Pacific news media, information and communication issues. Published by Asia-Pacific Network in association with the Journalism Programme, University of the South Pacific. This journal is linked to the website of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism, University of Technology, Sydney"

• Pacific Link - "an effort to network with Pacific activists and particularly indigenous activists on issues and concerns of the region. It is especially important to have some ongoing means of communications and dialogue among ourselves so that we can meet one another, share our struggles, support one another, develop strategies and plans of actions and enjoy the fruits of our creativity through our songs, poetry, writings and visual arts. The Pacific Link is also where we can convey our culture through our communications. This is important because it better reflects who we are and how we really think and feel"

• Pacific Magazine - is printed six times per year and generally runs between 72 and 80 pages per issue. Features and articles include general news, business, travel, culture, politics, history, education, and current events about Micronesia, Polynesia and Melanesia

• Pacific Resources for Education and Learning - a nonprofit corporation that serves the U.S. entities in the Pacific region. PREL helps Pacific schools improve educational outcomes for children, youth, and adults by providing research, development, training, technical assistance, group facilitation, information resource activities, dissemination and evaluation services, an excellent resource

• Pacific Water and Sanitation Programme - "UNDP’s association with the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) goes right back to its foundation in 1972. The institution-building assistance which UNDP had provided in these early days, was instrumental in the formation of SOPAC as an independent regional organisation in 1984 and to its direct involvement in the execution of the Pacific Water Supply and Sanitation Programme. For some time the UNDP was looking for a "regional home" for its Pacific Water Supply and Sanitation Programme. The matter was considered by SPOCC (South Pacific Organisations Co-ordinating Committee) and in 1993 they agreed that SOPAC should be the lead agency for the UNDP-funded program, with the solid waste component sub-contracted to SPREP (South Pacific Regional Environment Program) and sanitation aspects to the SPC (South Pacific Commission)"

• Polynesian Cultural Center - located in Hawaii, "the 42-acre, open-air Polynesian Cultural Center casts you in the role of explorer on a whirlwind tour of the Pacific. The people you meet are real Pacific islanders. You'll navigate a living map of Polynesia, visiting seven Polynesian nations: Tahiti, Fiji, Tonga, New Zealand, the Marquesas, Samoa and Hawaii"

• Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies (Australian National University) - "The rationale for the establishment of the School was essentially the growing awareness that Australia needed a sound understanding of the problems both of the 'Pacific Island neighbourhood', and the 'near North' of Southeast and East Asia. Asia and the Pacific remain a region of manifest importance to Australia and the School seeks to provide the intellectual community of Australia (government, media, other academics and the interested public) with an understanding of the societies and environments of the region. Achieving this purpose requires the cultivation of several interacting disciplines, based on solid evidence, appropriate time-depth and rigorous analysis. Work is carried out on the Australian mainland in physical geography, archaeology and anthropology and Australia's relations with Asia and the Pacific Islands is an important theme in most fields"

• Sites: A Journal for South Pacific Cultural Studies - "a multi-disciplinary journal established in 1981 to promote the study of cultural questions within the broad tradition of left scholarship. We publish articles with a predominantly Aotearoa/New Zealand and South Pacific focus on a wide range of cultural debates from a variety of critical perspectives"

• Small Islands Information Network - a global site with reference to Oceania, of course; check it out as it contains some amazing information on islands

• South Pacific Centre for Communication and Information in Development - located at the University of Papua New Guinea and formed in January 1995 through the combination of Journalism Studies and the Department of Library and Information Studies, provides interesting resources

• South Pacific Commission - "SPC is the oldest regional organisation in the Pacific, with 26 member countries and territories. It is a technical advice, assistance, training and research agency serving the 22 Island countries and territories of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. SPC enables all of the region’s Island countries and territories to express their needs and identify their own development priorities. It is a bilingual organisation, with English and French as its official working languages"

  • Public Health Surveillance Network

• South Pacific Regional Public Health Association - a regional non-governmental and non-political organization composed of health and non-health professionals. The mission of the SPRPHA is to promote personal and public (community) health throughout the South Pacific region

• State, Society & Governance in Melanesia (SSGM) Project - "explores the nexus between state and society with specific reference to the concept of governance and its perceived weakness in the independent states of the southwest Pacific. It does so in terms of particular intersections of global, regional, national, provincial and local contexts. A core concern is with the nature and problems of sovereignty in new, avowedly Christian nations, which were effectively colonial creations and had no overarching indigenous polities. These nations, furthermore, are located within the world's most diverse region, in social, cultural, ethnic and linguistic terms, and are subject to multiple external pressures, especially but not exclusively economic"

• United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific - providing rich resources and data on the region

• University of the South Pacific, Fiji
  • Pacific Law Materials
  • School of Social and Economic Development
  • South Pacific Island Web Atlas

• UNDP Pacific Sustainable Development Network - "promote sustainable development by enhancing information access, communications, networking and awareness among key decision makers in civil society, especially those operating at the community level. The project will use appropriate technologies for computer mediated communications to network locally, nationally, regionally and globally"

• WWW Virtual Library: Pacific Studies
  • The Treaty of Waitangi

List of Individual Countries

A
• American Samoa ( see also -> Samoa )
• Australia
C
• Cook Islands
F
• Fiji
• French Polynesia
G
• Guam
K
• Kiribati
M
• Marshall Islands
• Micronesia ( Federated States of ~ )
N
• Nauru
• New Caledonia
• New Zealand (Aotearoa)
• Niue
• Northern Mariana Islands
P
• Palau
• Pitcairn Islands
• Papua New Guinea
• Polynesia ( see -> French Polynesia )
S
• Samoa ( formerly known as Western Samoa; see also -> American Samoa )
• Solomon Islands
T
• Tahiti ( see -> French Polynesia )
• Tokelau
• Tonga
• Tuvalu
V
• Vanuatu ( formerly known as New Hebrides )
W
• Wallis and Futuna
• Western Samoa ( see -> Samoa )

Site Compass

Reference Note:

This URL:	http://www.ldb.org/vl/geo/oceania/index.htm
Last Modified:	3 July 2001
© 1997-2001 by:	Eberhard Wenzel Founded by Lucien E. Schlosser and Eberhard Wenzel © Copyright for the WWW Virtual Library and its logos by WWW Virtual Library