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Youth raise awareness on Non-communicable Diseases workshop in Noumea

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Youth raise awareness on Non-communicable Diseases

23 Aug 2017 | Noumea

Youth from Pacific Island countries and territories have gathered in Noumea, New Caledonia this week for a five-day media and communications training on Noncommunicable Diseases (NDCs). The training organized by the Pacific Community (SPC) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Pacific Office in Fiji with funding support from the Fond Pacific (France), developed the competence of youth groups from the Pacific ranging from 15-25 years old.

Young people from Fiji, New Zealand, Tonga, Vanuatu, Wallis & Futuna, French Polynesia and New Caledonia were selected through a competitive process requiring them to submit film project ideas about NCDs. This week’s workshop provided an opportunity for each group to refine their stories ideas and provide some guidance on promotion and marketing.

Once competed, each film will be disseminated though social media and used as advocacy and health promotion material in the region.

A group of public health and media professionals will be following and supporting each group throughout the life of the project.

While the groups came from across the Pacific, they were united in their passion for tackling the challenge of NDC’s.

According to Jaimeem Kenni from Vanuatu, “People in general do not consider Noncommunicable Diseases a youth issue, that’s a mistake! We are all affected one way or another. We need to be part of the solution.”

Dr Paula Vivili,‎ Director of Public Health Division at SPC highlighted the importance of bringing a spotlight to NCDs and noted the relevance and the value of having this message delivered by the regions youth: “The fact is that risk factors now develop at a younger age and increasingly diseases like diabetes and even heart diseases affect young people in this region. It is essential to engage youth in the response and not just as an audience of prevention messages but as active participants and partners of that prevention.”

Reflecting on the complexity of NCDs, Ferdinand Strobel, the Health and Development Adviser for the UNDP Pacific Office in Fiji, reiterated the importance of a consolidated approach to combatting one of the region’s most leading causes of death.

“NCDs are driven by the consumption of unhealthy products like tobacco, alcohol and junk food which are heavily promoted to the younger generation”, said Strobel.

“The rise of NCDs -just like climate change- results form an unsustainable development pathway. He added, “We need to change that, it is everyone’s business to get involved and the time is now because the risk factors of today are the diseases of tomorrow.”

‎Non-communicable Diseases constitute the leading cause of premature death and pose a formidable development challenge for the 21st century.

The challenge is particularly relevant in the Pacific region, which suffers from some of the highest NDC rates in the world.

For more information, or interviews please contact:


Peter Foster, Communications Director, Pacific Community,Tel: (+679) 337 9451, Email:  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it


Jone Tuiipelehaki Raqauqau, Communications Associate, Effective Governance, UNDP Pacific Office in Fiji, Tel: (679) 3227 552, E:  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Last Updated on Thursday, 14 September 2017 10:38  

Newsflash

“Geographical Information Systems and Remote Sensing is one of the fastest developing technologies no matter whether you are a provider, and developer or a user. And here in the region and for the benefit of Pacific island countries and territories we are all striving to stay at the ‘cutting edge of the technology.’  In this regard the theme of this Conference focusing on mapping Pacific resources is very timely”, said Dr. Russell Howorth, Director, SOPAC Division of SPC, in the opening keynote at the Pacific GIS/RS User Conference held at Suva last week.

The growing impact of GIS and Remote Sensing was very much evident by the record number of attendees and presentations at the conference. Around 300 participants, from the around the Pacific Region convened for the three and half days of presentations, workshops and discussions.

Current and upcoming trends in the geospatial fields such as LiDAR (light detection and ranging) Imagery, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), recent progress in vegetation and land cover mapping, improvements in satellite technologies, imagery classification and open source software were heavily covered during the conference.

The conference has been held annually in Suva for the Pacific region since 1999, is free to attend and jointly organized by Secretariat of the Pacific Community, University of the South Pacific, various departments of the Fiji Government, with support from GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit), satellite data and GIS software companies.