Healthy opportunities
p. 37 · Read in the full issue
THE South Pacific Forum is founded on the recognition that its widely scattered member countries can ben efit through re
gional co-operation
- that is, through tackling common
problems together,
and where necess ary, speaking as one.
There is no doubt that island trade,
particularly ex
ports, has benefited in a thousand im
portant ways since the forum was established as an influential regional bloc.
Sometimes, though, potential trad ing benefits don’t work out, and one such was a plan put forward some years ago for the islands to save on the high cost of drugs and medical supplies by importing them through a central buying co-operative to be established for the purpose.
There is no drug manufacturing industry in the islands, and the idea was that greater economies of scale would give the co-op greater bargain ing power than any single government, and especially any of the smaller island countries.
The plan hardly got out of the survey stage when it was seen that the very characteristics of smallness that made the idea attractive in the first place would combine to defeat it.
It was possible to buy better in bulk, but the region’s isolation, small popu lations, expensive and irregular trans port links and inadequate communica tions - that is, the cost of distributing the drugs - would absorb any savings that could be made.
There is therefore no central drug purchasing scheme for forum island countries, although some individual governments do benefit from co
ordinating orders.
Despite this, I do believe there must be other ways islanders can benefit from the health industry, both as importers and exporters, if we did some lateral thinking about the opportunities.
For example, the basis of good health is adequate shel ter and nu trition, and islanders tra ditionally have had more im mediate and cheaper access to both - to such natural health products as fish, fruit, coconuts and staple veg etables - than the people of a large part of the rest of the
world.
Surely there are opportunities here to benefit from the fast-growing de mand by Western populations for natural health products of dependable
quality?
The islands can hardly be said to have even touched the demand for such old stand-bys as coconut cream and banana chips, but there must be many opportunities for new food products, gourmet or otherwise, skil fully marketed under the South Seas banner.
New Zealand marketers created a great new industry when they relaunched the Chinese gooseberry as Kiwifruit.
New opportunities open unexpec tedly. Burns Philp, for example, which once depended for its income on island trading and planting, has now little connection with the islands but is the world’s largest producer of yeast and vinegar, and soon will be the largest producer of spices.
It is the world’s only producer of nisin, an anti-microbial that occurs naturally in milk. Anti-microbials kill microbes. They are natural substances, unlike antibiotics, and are regarded as much safer to use in foods. Great new opportunities are expected from them, and island food exports could well benefit.
Such “natural substances” bring us to the question of traditional medicine, and research into plants. Can we benefit from it? I can imagine the Pacific Islands have a lot to offer in that direction that the West has yet to recognise.