Australia is supporting The Kids Research Institute Australia (a University of Western Australia affiliate) and its partners in unifying two decades of work on rheumatic heart disease (RHD) in the Pacific Region. The initiative introduces a new mechanism to grow and expand Pacific health leadership through the Fiji-based Pacific RHD Knowledge Hub. The Hub signifies a new era of coordinated, sustainable and impactful activity, addressing urgent unmet health needs in our region.

Our partnership with Australian Red Cross (ARC) is strengthening community capacity to prepare for and respond to epidemic disease threats in Fiji, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. ARC and its partners, Fiji Red Cross, Solomon Islands Red Cross and Vanuatu Red Cross, will work with communities to increase knowledge and skills on epidemic disease awareness-raising, prevention and control, thereby improving disease surveillance and enhancing and extending national surveillance systems.

BICOLLAB II is a bilateral laboratory collaboration with Indonesia (laboratory strengthening through twinning) project with the Animal Disease Investigation Centre Wates (DIC Wates), Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), Indonesia. Phase One was funded through the Health Security Initiative, the predecessor of the Partnerships for a Healthy Region initiative.

The Strengthening Standards Capability Project (SSCP) will support partner countries to improve adoption and development of digital health data and interoperability standards.

We are partnering with CSIRO’s Biomedical Manufacturing team to improve the capacity for Thai state-owned organisations to manufacture essential drugs to improve local and equitable access to medicines. This project will focus on training and development in two areas: 1) Biologic drug development using the Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cell platform; and 2) Small molecule Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) drug development using continuous flow processing.

Malaysia imports 100% of its vaccines. Australia provided vaccines and technical assistance to support Malaysia’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the end of the pandemic, this support pivoted to meet Malaysia’s ambitions at developing local capacity for vaccine development, including a national pilot-scale vaccine manufacturing facility at the Malaysia Genome and Vaccine Institute (MGVI).

The Australian Institute for Health and Welfare (AIHW) Pacific Health Information Support Hub (PHISH) aims to strengthen the health information management capabilities of Pacific Island Countries (PICs). PHISH provides support at the regional level, as well as working directly with Fiji, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Vanuatu to improve their ability to collect, validate, analyse, and present health data to inform public health policy.

Australia’s partnership with Regional Emergency and Critical Care Systems Strengthening Initiative (RECSI) consortium will produce more resilient and equitable health systems across the Pacific and Timor-Leste by strengthening emergency and critical care capacity. RECSI will address capability gaps highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and advance World Health Assembly recommendations to strengthen universal health coverage.

This partnership will continue funding for ACIAR to deliver locally-led research across the Indo-Pacific region on the links between human and environmental health and food security, to inform public health interventions. 

Australia is partnering with the WHO Collaborating Centre for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Development (WHO CCNM (UTS)) at the University of Technology Sydney, working with the South Pacific Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officers Alliance (SPCNMOA) to improve nursing and midwifery leadership, education, standards, and practice, through the Strengthening Health Workforce in the Pacific (SHWP) initiative.