A growing shortage of qualified nutritionists is threatening access to basic dietary guidance across Fiji, the acting head of the National Food and Nutrition Centre has warned, as the Health Ministry and partners scramble to plug gaps at community level.
Acting NFNC Manager Kriti Prasad said the limited pool of trained nutrition professionals is already making it difficult for communities to get the support they need to make informed food choices, and that the problem is compounded by high turnover among health staff. “So turnover of staff, having these trainings done over and over again, and also the practice. So sometimes when we have our health workers leaving the centre, there’s a void created. So when someone new comes in, we have to do the trainings and it becomes a cost for our own Ministry to train over and over,” Prasad told media, highlighting the recurring expense and disruption caused when trained workers leave the public service or migrate overseas.
Health experts are warning that inadequate access to nutrition advice leaves communities more vulnerable to diet‑related illnesses — an outcome that could place additional strain on hospital and primary‑care services already facing capacity and funding pressures. Prasad and other officials say strengthening nutrition services is essential to preventing non‑communicable diseases that are linked to poor diets and to supporting long‑term population health.
In response, UNICEF Pacific is collaborating with the Ministry of Health to develop a practical toolkit for community health workers to promote better nutrition where dietitians and nutritionists are not available. Penjani Kamudoni of UNICEF Pacific said the toolkit aims to equip frontline workers with simple, evidence‑based guidance and counselling tools. “So once that is fully realized, it will go a long way in ensuring that even in places where dieticians cannot be available, but community health workers are there, the community would get the information and the support that they need,” Kamudoni said.
The initiative is intended as an immediate mitigation while longer‑term workforce solutions are pursued. Prasad has urged more young people to consider careers in nutrition, arguing that expanding the profession is central to building sustainable services and reducing the need for repeated on‑the‑job training as staff turnover occurs. Officials also say investment in nutrition education and recruitment will be necessary to reverse current shortages.
The warning about nutritionist shortages comes as the health sector undergoes other adjustments, including recent changes to outpatient medicine dispensing in some hospitals and the roll‑out of new diagnostic equipment, demonstrating a system in the midst of reform but still constrained by workforce challenges. Policymakers will need to balance these capital and service investments with measures to retain and grow the health workforce, stakeholders say.
For now, the UNICEF‑backed toolkit and renewed calls to promote nutrition studies are the primary responses on the table. Officials say the toolkit’s rollout and follow‑up training for community workers will be a key near‑term test of whether practical measures can bridge service gaps while Fiji works to expand its cadre of trained nutrition professionals.
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