Pacific Life Expectancy Gains Uneven As Naoero Falls Furthest Behind, Experts Say

Life expectancy in several Pacific Island countries
remains “below average” in comparison to global averages,
despite a significant increase in average life expectancy
since 1960.

“Average life expectancy across the
Pacific is 68.8 years, up from 52.7 in 1960. That’s a
significant increase, but it is well below the rate of
progress that middle-income countries as a group have
achieved,” according to a recently
published Devpolicy Blog article.

The
authors of the article, titled ‘Life expectancy in the
Pacific, and the case of Naoero’, say that the average
increase for Pacific Island countries was 16 years, while
for lower-middle income countries the average increase was
23 years and upper-middle income countries 19
years.

However, they point out that one Pacific Island
nation was particularly falling behind.

“In 1960
Naoero’s life expectancy was (57.9yrs) above the
upper-middle-income average (54.4yrs),” Australian National
University’s Stephen Howes and The University of Papua New
Guinea’s Albert Prabhakar Gudapati, write.

“Now
[Naoero] is below even the low-income average (67.9yrs).
Naoero has gone from having the Pacific’s third-highest life
expectancy in 1960 to having its lowest in 2023. And it is
the lowest by a long way: four years.”

Howes and
Gudapati also noted that Fiji, the Marshall Islands, the
Federated States of Micronesia had life expectancy fall
below average since 1960, while the Solomon Islands and
Vanuatu moved from below average to above average.

“At
the other, more positive end of the performance spectrum,
Cook Islands has gone from having an average life expectancy
to having the highest in the Pacific.”

Other Pacific
Island countries that have below average life expetancy are
Kiribati, Papua New Guiea and Palau.

The authors aruge
that Naoero could benefit from migration rights to
Australia, similar to what the Cook Islands and Niue have
with New Zealand: unlimited migration rights to Aotearoa and
who are also entitled to a New Zealand
passport.

“While Naoero is a high-income country now,
it endured a severe decline in income and consequent
hardships during its ‘riches to rags’ story of the
1980s,1990s and 2000s,” they wrote.

“More than one in
five [Dei-Naoero] adults [have] diabetes, among the highest
rates in the world. Some argue that Naoero is still paying
the price for phosphate mining, including in terms of poor
air quality.

“To its credit, Naoero is actively trying
to improve the health of its citizens, with extensive
exercise promotion campaigns.

“More controversially,
last year the country took the radical step of handing over
management of its health system to a foreign company, the
UAE company Global Mission Support Services.”

They say
it was too early to say if the Global Mission Support
Services agreement would make a difference, but running a
health system in a small and remote island country would be
a difficult task.

“Unlike the other high-income
countries of the Pacific, Naoero’s citizens have no open
migration pathway; a small allocation under Australia’s
ballot-based Pacific Engagement Visa is the only
preferential access they have. This means that overseas
health care is both difficult to obtain and
expensive.

Howes and Gudapati argue that while having
a Cook Islands and Niue-type migration deal with NZ would
not be a “complete answer”, Naoero could “benefit
significantly, not just economically but in terms of health
outcomes, by negotiating a similar deal with
Australia”.

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