Dr Afuha’amango Tuipulotu pledged to fix ‘pain and suffering’ in Tonga. Now she’s making a difference as the world’s chief nurse

Photography: Supplied by WHO. Retrieved from abc.net.au

As a young girl growing up in Tonga, Dr Amelia Latu Afuha’amango Tuipulotu lived only two minutes’ walk from the hospital she would eventually lead.

Her relatives from Tonga’s outer islands would travel to the capital Nuku’alofa and stay with her family to access specialist healthcare at Vaiola Hospital, the only tertiary hospital in the country.

“In our small, poor home, they came to live with us because it’s very expensive to go to and from where they live and it was very far,” Afuha’amango Tuipulotu said.

It was on those early hospital visits where Tonga’s future health minister became “intrigued”.

“I used to see people in pain and suffering, and children crying, and I used to say to myself — ‘I need to do something about that in the future’.”

Afuha’amango Tuipulotu is now the most senior nurse in the world at age 51.

She became the Chief Nursing Officer of the World Health Organization in late 2022, a role which saw Afuha’amango Tuipulotu move with her husband and two kids from tropical Tonga to Geneva, Switzerland, over 17,000kms away.

“Coming here in January, I was shocked with the cold. I was almost frozen,” she said.