Tonga becomes first Pacific island country to apply WHO’s Strategic Toolkit for Assessing Risk (STAR)

Excerpt and Photo from who.int

On 15 January 2022, a massive volcanic eruption shook the small island nation of Tonga at a scale that the country hadn’t witnessed since 1883. The volcanic eruption was followed by tsunami waves which struck the west coast of Tongatapu, ‘Eua and Ha’apai islands.

Two weeks after the volcanic eruption, Tonga detected cases of COVID-19 and initiated a response to what became their first wave of community transmission. “We were stretched thin,” said Dr Joseph Takai, Senior Medical Officer at Tonga’s Ministry of Health, when asked about the impact of three simultaneous emergencies. “The tsunami damaged an undersea communications cable, cutting us off from the rest of the world for over a month. So, we had to rely on ourselves and draw from previous efforts to prepare for such emergencies,” he added.

Elaborating on the importance of emergency preparedness, Dr Takai shared “Although our first case of COVID-19 was not until 2022, we had started preparing for it since 2020.  So that whole period—between 2020 and 2022—we were trying to organize ourselves, create guidelines and train health care workers. When COVID-19 eventually hit us, we were ready.”