Waatea News Column: If there were ever a time to acknowledge the need for a Māori Health Authority – COVID is it

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 One of the lessons out of the 2019 measles epidemic was the importance of mobile vaccination clinics to go out to the community via trusted leaders within those communities.

Those communities weren’t ignorant or vaccine-hesitant, the majority weren’t economically able to fund the transport costs to get to the vaccination centre!

These exact same amplifications of poverty are playing out with the COVID vaccination program!

Blaming poor communities who don’t have the resources to afford transport to the vaccination clinics is a malevolent position to take on what is a public health emergency, that level of community poverty is an indictment on us all, it isn’t those communities fault!

When Māori Health Agencies lead the response out to their wider community vaccination rates climb, when they don’t they slow.

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When Māori Health Agencies complain about a mountain of paperwork to sign off before gaining urgently needed cash I reflect on the ease with which we handed out billions in wage subsidies using nothing more than one page of information.Let’s not pretend it can’t be done.

The success of Māori Health Agencies demands an independent Māori Health Authority, to pretend otherwise is to harm basic public health.

First published on Waatea News.

 

6 COMMENTS

  1. Yes and I am wondering where the 350 Nurses coming from overseas are going to live does our Health Ministry or the elderly peoples homes have accommodation available as far too many NZers don’t have anywhere suitable to live.

  2. martyn martyn martyn….tut tut tut….

    still trying to blame racism for vax resistance, it’s tedious….and what’s the betting that continued underfunding and cuts for any future Moari health organisation won’t turn it into another paternalist ‘native affairs dept’….suppose funnling money to the oreo iwiocracy is a step up (or sideways) from giving the funding to entitled middleclass ‘managers’.

    yeaaa go equality, take that system..

  3. martyn martyn martyn….tut tut tut….

    still trying to blame racism for vax resistance, it’s tedious….and what’s the betting that continued underfunding and cuts for any future Moari health organisation won’t turn it into another paternalist ‘native affairs dept’….suppose funnling money to the oreo iwiocracy is a step up (or sideways) from giving the funding to entitled middleclass ‘managers’.

    yeaaa go equality, take that system..

  4. Sounds like the PM and labour has flipp’d and gone over to the Darkside.
    “Freedumb Day!”
    It has a Donald Trump kinda sound to it.

    Labour is moving further to the ‘Right’.

    The ‘tail’ will become the divide. The Labour government will play the ole ‘divide and conquer’ Colonial card again.
    Maori v the rest.

  5. gagarin – ‘need’ not racism, and go where would the greatest need be found?
    Martyn lays it out rightly!
    Blaming poor communities who don’t have the resources to afford transport to the vaccination clinics is a malevolent position to take on what is a public health emergency, that level of community poverty is an indictment on us all, it isn’t those communities fault!

    • I wasn’t ‘blaming’ anyone one just pointing out that ‘ring fenced’ fundingcan be cut as well as raised…can you gaurantee a future govt won’t deliberately under fund a stand alone Maori service….I can’t

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