Wena Harawira speaks with Dr David Clark.
Dr David Clark, Minister of Health told Tapatahi this morning that equity is essential to his tenure and that was the reason he took the role.
“We know that we don’t have equity of outcomes. We’ve got a way to go as a country. I need to see progress because equity is the expectations for DHBs now," Minister Clark says.
Having specific Māori responses to health issues is something the minister welcomes. Having seen the evidence of their effectiveness he welcomes the approach.
“It’s becoming much more business as usual that we need to have a specific Māori response.
“It’s also true that there’s an increasing number of people who want to use Māori specific services," Dr Clark says.
This means, he says, that funding is now being diverted to Māori and Pacific responses to problems like addiction.
There is a backlog of testing and screening that the MoH needs to catch up on. Minister Clark says that the slow COVID-19 response in other countries means that they are worse off.
"The worse scenario is the one that they are facing in many European countries. Where they have not only a backlog but they have no prospect of returning to have those surgeries and screening programmes happening for the foreseeable future," Minister Clark says,
But the work did not come to a complete stop. The Minister says that cancer surgeries were taking place at alert level four because the hospitals were almost empty.
The Minister confirmed that he is aiming to address the issue of nurse and doctor wages in the near future. This he says, will be part of a nationwide reboot of how he intends to do things. A reboot, that he says will involve increasing the funding and scope of Māori health providers.