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A PERSPECTIVE C.I I-T.JMAN I-EALTH AND IT5 IMPLICATIOi{S
FOR TI-E POTENTIAL tr TFE PACIFIC REGIOI.I
Ian Prior
Director, EpidemiologY Unit
Wellington HosPital
Wellington, New Zealand
ABSTRACT
The Island populations in the Pacific are made up of people of differing
ethnic background - Polynesian, Melanesian, Micronesian, who live in physical
environrnents which vary from small alolls with limited resources to high islands
where bounteous supplies of soil and food have been available for hundreds of
years.
The patterns of health and disease in these populations are now showing
many changes which can be associated with urtanization, migration and altering
Iife styles. Health patterns and population growth have been greaily influenced by
irnprovements in control of the acute infectious diseases, chronie disorders slch as
tuberculosis and filariasis, and in the areas of maternal and child health. SLudies
in the Pacific over the past twenty years have demonstrated a wide gradient of
risk of conditions which in Western Societies are the principal causes of mortality
such as cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, stroke and coronary hnart disease.
These conditions are now emerging as important health hazards in some nnre
developed Pacific socieLieg such as Fijir samoa, Trtga, and the Cook lslands and
involve some ethnic groups more than olhers. At the same time migration from the
South Pacific to industrialized urban societies s.tch as New Zealand is providing a
still greater change in enyironrnent, Iife style and health patterns.
Multidiiciplinary epidemiological studies such as the Td