Saia Ma’u Piukala is a

Tonga Tonga (, ; ), officially the Kingdom of Tonga ( to, Puleʻanga Fakatuʻi ʻo Tonga), is a Polynesian country and archipelago. The country has 171 islands – of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about , scattered over in ...

n politician, surgeon, and former

Cabinet Minister A minister is a politician who heads a ministry, making and implementing decisions on policies in conjunction with the other ministers. In some jurisdictions the head of government is also a minister and is designated the ‘prime minister’, � ...

. Piukala was trained as a surgeon at the

Fiji School of Medicine The Fiji School of Medicine is a tertiary institution based in Suva, Fiji. Originally established in 1885 as the ''Suva Medical School''. FSM became the College of Medicine, Nursing & Health Sciences as part of Fiji National University in 2010. It ...

Suva Suva () is the capital and largest city of Fiji. It is the home of the country's largest metropolitan area and serves as its major port. The city is located on the southeast coast of the island of Viti Levu, in Rewa Province, Central Divi ...

Fiji Fiji ( , ,; fj, Viti, ; Fiji Hindi: फ़िजी, ''Fijī''), officially the Republic of Fiji, is an island country in Melanesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies about north-northeast of New Zealand. Fiji consists ...

. Before entering politics he worked as a surgeon for the Tongan Ministry of Health. He was first elected to the

Legislative Assembly of Tonga The Legislative Assembly of Tonga ( to, Fale Alea ʻo Tonga) is the unicameral legislature of Tonga. The assembly has 26 members in which 17 members elected by majority of the people for a 5-year term in multi-seat constituencies via the singl ...

as representative for Vavaʻu 14 in the

2014 Tongan general election General elections were held in Tonga on 27 November 2014. All twenty-six elected seats in the single-chamber Legislative Assembly were up for election, although the monarch, acting on the advice of his Prime Minister, retains the possibility t ...

and was appointed Minister of Health in the cabinet of

ʻAkilisi Pōhiva Samiuela ʻAkilisi Pōhiva (7 April 1941 – 12 September 2019) was a Tongan pro-democracy activist and politician. Pohiva, the leader of the Democratic Party of the Friendly Islands (DPFI), served as the Prime Minister of Tonga from 2014 to h ...

. He was re-elected in the 2017 election and reappointed as Minister of Health and Public Enterprises. In January 2019 a minor reshuffle saw him swap his Public Enterprises portfolio for Internal Affairs. In May 2019 Piukala was appointed to the

World Health Organization The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health. The WHO Constitution states its main objective as "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of h ...

executive board. Following the death of ʻAkilisi Pōhiva and his replacement by Pohiva Tuʻiʻonetoa in October 2019 he was not reappointed to Tuʻiʻonetoa's new Cabinet. He was re-elected in the 2021 election. On 28 December 2021 he was appointed to the Cabinet of

Siaosi Sovaleni Siaosi ‘Ofakivahafolau Sovaleni (born 28 February 1970) is a Tongan politician who has served as the Prime Minister of Tonga since 2021. He has previously served as a Cabinet Minister, and from 2014 to 2017, he was Deputy Prime Minister of To ...

as Minister of Health. On 12 January 2024 he resigned as a Minister and from parliament to take up a role as WHO Regional Director for the Western Pacific Region Office. He was replaced as health minister by Siale ‘Akau’ola.

References

Living people Members of the Legislative Assembly of Tonga Ministers of health of Tonga Fiji School of Medicine alumni People from Vavaʻu World Health Organization officials Year of birth missing (living people) {{Tonga-politician-stub