“Reduce Child Mortality” – the fourth Millennium Developmental Goal acknowledges the fact that major causes of child deaths globally is malnutrition and poor access to primary health care and infrastructure. Ths article aims to quantify the magnitude of malnutrition among children 0-5 years of age within the Tavua Subdivision from January 2010 to April 2012.

Patient waiting time is a real problem in Fiji and unfortunately Nadi Sub-divisional hospital is no exception. The objective of this study was to determine patient waiting time in the GOPD and SOPD clinic in the Nadi Sub-divisional Hospital, additionally to gauge patient satisfaction. Time logs were given to patients in order to log the time as the patient went through the diffrent management and investigation. Secondly a questionnaire was given to every 20th patient to measure their satisfaction with the services they received in GOPD and SOPD. The results showed that it took 2 hours and 57 minutes on average for a patient to be attended by a doctor in the GOPD clinic and 2 hours and 7 minutes in the SOPD clinic. 50% of all patients sampled believed that there should be more doctors and 36% complained of the shortage of drugs at the pharmacy. Any improvement to the quality of health care delivery in the Nadi Sub-Divisional hospital needs to include an increase in doctors as well as addressing how to prevent common drug shortages in the pharmacy department.

Suicide is an important public health issue in Fiji and described as a “chronic epidemic”, only recently surpassed by automobile fatalities as the leading cause of death in young people. A total of 1749 people had attempted or completed suicides with an average of 194 per year between 2002 and 2010 as per police records.5 Fiji has maintained one of the highest suicide rates in the world in young Fijian women of Indian descent along the sugar belt areas of Fiji, at one point being cited as the second highest in the world behind rural China8. Ths is a quantitative descriptive retrospective study on all cases of suicide and attempted suicide seen at the Ra Sub divisional Hospital (RSH) from January 2008 to August 2012. Data sources were obtained from the Rakiraki sub divisional hospital mortuary record book, hospital inpatient records and Rakiraki Police Departments’ records of all cases of deliberate self harm were also collected in the study period. Th overall prevalence of suicides and attempted suicides in Rakiraki of 0.12%. Ths is relatively a higher prevalence when compared to the national statistics. Thre is a higher predominance of suicides and attempted suicides in the IndoFijians, the youths, and in males as compared to females. Hanging and chemical ingestion were the commonest methods of suicide and attempted suicide in Rakiraki and these should be the main targets for prevention activities. Indo- Fijian females were reported mainly to have attempted suicides whilst Indo-Fijian males predominantly committed suicides in Rakiraki.