The national airline has con-firmed to back up the in-augural Pacific Specialist Healthcare (PSH) Hospitals Pan Pacific Hash 2027. Fiji Airways chief customer of-ficer Akuila Batiweti revealed this during the website launch at the PSH Hospital last Friday night where the local hashers (runners) were present in large numbers. Mr Batiweti said the national airline, which was responsible for bringing in 75 per cent of all tour-ists into the country, was ready to support the sports tourism event, which would see the arrival of thousands of visitors to our shores. “I’m sure we can assist the organ-ising committee – that is the Fiji Hash House Harriers – do better than what was achieved in 2018,” Mr Batiweti said. “With the early bird special-ity marketing initiatives and great teamwork between all stakehold-ers, I am sure the positive eco-nomic impact of hosting this event could be doubled to $10 million and the number of visitors could be increased from the previous 2000 runners as well.” Pan Pacific Hash chairman and former Fiji College of General Practitioners (FCGP) president Dr Ram Raju said the availability of world-class healthcare was a pre-requisite for sports tourism. He said the upcoming event, had been dubbed as the biggest sports tourism event in the country. He also said many international sporting events had been cancelled in the past because of there had been no state-of-the-art medical services. “The presence of PSH Hospitals has been a game-changer and we will now see more international events coming to Nadi,” Dr Raju said. No strangers to organising such events, Dr Raju said the last such event was the Interhash 2018, host-ed in Nadi, generated over $5 mil-lion for the Fijian economy with the presence of 2000 runners from across the world. “Our red dress charity run in 2018 collected $132,000 for the Nadi Sub-divisional Hospital and we had re-ceived a donation of $300,000 from the previous government to organ-ise an event of such magnitude,” Dr Raju said. He said the current government was still contemplating on coming in with the sponsorship this time around and the organising com-mittee would continue to engage with them. PSH Hospitals’ founder and chief executive officer Parvish Kumar said he would continue to support events which bring people togeth-er and create a positive impact for our economy. “As a state-of-the-art 130-bed spe-cialty private hospital located right opposite the Nadi International Airport, we are always ready to support sports tourism and medi-cal tourism activities which gener-ally benefits the country,” Mr Ku-mar said. He said participants could come and enjoy their run and extended holidays in Fiji without worry-ing about medical and healthcare needs which would be taken care of by PSH Hospitals. The new website which also fea-tures online registration for par-ticipants can be accessed at www. paph2027.com. Feedback: waisea.nasokia@fijisun.com.fj