SPC Geoscience Division

Every year people in Fiji drown in floods. Most of these fatalities occur as a result of people making poor choices and entering the floodwater.

Speaking at last week’s SPC/SOPAC Division’s STAR meeting (17th-18th October) in Nadi, Dr Stephen Yeo, a flood risk management consultant from Australia said, “A disproportionately high number of those who have lost their lives in floods in Fiji are males, especially teenagers and young men aged 15 to 24 years, the median age being 23 years.”

Although thirty percent of the world’s earthquakes occur within the southwest Pacific and eighty-one percent of tsunamis in the region are generated by earthquake activity, the region experiences, on average, some of the slowest detection times for earthquake activity.

At the SPC/SOPAC Division’s STAR meeting held in Nadi this week, Mrs Esline Garaebiti Bule, Vanuatu Meteorology and Geohazards Department (VMGD) said that the earthquake and tsunami events with casualties in Papua New Guinea, 1998, Vanuatu in 1999, Solomon Islands, 2007, and more recently, Tonga and Samoa in 2009 indicated the region needs a tsunami early-warning system based on fast earthquake detection system for the South West Pacific Region.

Scientists from around the Pacific have joined 22 member countries and territories of the SOPAC Division of the Secretariat of the South Pacific (SPC) in a six-day meeting being held in Nadi from October 17-22.

This is SOPAC’s first meeting as a Division since it became a part of SPC in January of this year.

“This is an opportunity to review the progress and directions of the SOPAC Division Work Programme, and to stimulate and plan new, emerging initiatives needed in the region,” said Dr. Russell Howorth, SOPAC’s Director.

The Global Handwashing Day is being celebrated around the globe on October 15. Simply washing hands with soap breaks the transmission route of infectious diseases, which is crucial in saving lives. Washing hands with soap at critical times can reduce diarrhoeal incidence by 47%. Diarrhoea occupies a leading position among diseases as a cause of death and illness, especially in children.

In the Pacific region, around 3000 children under the age of 5 years die from diarrhoea annually. Globally, hand washing could save around 1 million lives, more than any single vaccine or medical intervention.

Hand washing with soap at critical times is a simple and cost-effective measure to improve health and will significantly reduce the two leading causes of childhood mortality worldwide – diarrhoeal disease and acute respiratory infection.