Special Issue on Pacific Health

The World Health Organization (WHO) has defined a healthy island as an island that is commit-ted to, and involved in, a process of achieving a better health and quality of life for its people and healthier physical and social environments in the context of sustainable environment. The main challenges facing island health include the increasing burden of noncommunicable dis-eases as well as the continuing, and sometimes reemerging, burden of communicable diseases. Human resources for heath in remote areas are always a problem, but it is even more difficult to develop and retain health workers on islands. Some remote island villages, be it in the Pacific region or elsewhere, have only the bare necessities for survival; no electricity, no proper toilets or clean drinking water. In India, for example, the Indian government brings electric power, education, and health services to rural villages. Together with UNICEF, the Indian government is attempting to bring basic health care to isolated island villages, such as those situated along the Brahmaputra River or in the Andaman archipelagoes. But the challenge of small popula-tions, remoteness and an island environment make this difficult. Indonesia and the Philippines have the largest number of islands, countless thousands of them, and providing public health services in these remote island villages is difficult and challenging because of geography