Sione Tapa

Sione Tapa (30 October 1923 – 9 May 2018) was a Tongan politician, physician, and philanthropist. He was the first Tongan to graduate with a medical degree. He served as Tonga's Health Minister from 1970 to 1996.

Tapa was born in Nukuʻalofa and educated at Tonga College and the Fiji School of Medicine. After graduating in 1944, he attended Auckland Grammar School and then the University of Otago, graduating in 1953 with an MB ChB. and again from November 1972 to January 1981. He was later chair of the World Health Organization Regional Committee for the Western Pacific from 1982 to 1983, and a member of the WHO Executive Board from 1989 to 1990.

In 2012 he donated TP$1 million saved from his ministerial salary to establish a scholarship for students who wanted to study health.