The University of Hawaii’s medical school for the first time is placing a paid faculty member on Hawaii island to address its chronic shortage of doctors.

Dr. Kareem Khozain of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology will be the first physician from the John A. Burns School of Medicine to serve on the island as part of what could become a bigger program to ease the shortage.

The department is posting Khozain at Bay Clinic in Hilo.

“This is extraordinary because JABSOM is reaching out to the Big Island,” said Dr. John Uohara, one of 100 Hawaii island doctors who graduated from JABSOM. “This is a wonderful start, and we feel it will go a long way to easing the physician shortage.”

One proposal to further meet the need would be to require all JABSOM third-year residents to rotate through Hilo Medical Center, he said.

Uohara credits the school’s OB-GYN department Chairman Dr. Ivica Zalud, JABSOM Dean Dr. Jerris Hedges and Big Island Mayor Harry Kim for helping to spearhead getting a medical school doctor in Hilo.

Small brush fires near Nahiku, Waiehu snuffed

The Maui Fire Department said Thursday that investigators were unable to determine the cause of two small brush fires Wednesday in Nahiku and Waiehu.

No injuries occurred and no structures were threatened.

A driver into Hana reported at 4:06 a.m. seeing lots of smoke but no flames in the Wailua-Nahiku area of Hana Highway 360, near mile marker 22. Crews from a Hana fire engine and water tanker extinguished it at 5 a.m.

Then another brush fire broke out at about 9:19 a.m. in former macadamia nut fields in Waiehu. Firefighters had the blaze under control at 9:52 a.m. and extinguished by 11 a.m., the Fire Department said in a news release.

A burned-out vehicle was discovered in the middle of the scorched three-quarter-acre area.