There was a risk students previously supported by the service could come to harm without something to replace the in-school clinics, Dr Fairbairn said.
“This isn't just about people who can't afford to take their children to the doctor,” she said. “This is about young people who don't even have anyone looking out for them.
“To me, that was the real role these clinics played — educating students about how to access healthcare for themselves.”
A GP would visit each school up to three times a week, seeing on average 100 students a month. Up to 70 percent of those students were Maori.
Gisborne Boys' High School principal Andrew Turner is “hugely disappointed” by the DHB's decision not to continue funding the service, which has been in place for about two decades.
The in-school GP clinics have been “invaluable”, said Mr Turner, who is concerned about the gap left in their wake.
“They were providing a service our young men wouldn't otherwise get access to,” he said.
The service had removed barriers to accessing a GP, including cost and transport, allowing young people to visit a doctor without their parents' involvement.
The DHB informed the schools late last year the contract would not be continued, Mr Turner said.
The service had been on borrowed time since the start of last year, when the DHB agreed to continue funding the clinics for six to 12 months while it worked on designing a new mix of youth health services to capture more of the district's young people.
Hauora Tairawhiti planning and funding manager Nicola Ehau said Gisborne's youth had been calling for more wide-ranging health services since 2008 when their views were outlined in a DHB youth health strategy.
“We need to let the youth of Tairawhiti know that we've heard them,” Ms Ehau said of the DHB's decision to stop funding the in-school GP clinics while it made “well overdue” changes to its youth health service offerings.
The DHB was still working on what its new mix of services would look like and Ms Ehau could not provide a time frame for when that design work would be completed.
The in-school GP service contract was no longer sustainable, given increasing costs for general practice services, Ms Ehau said.
She would not reveal how much the contract for the 2019 school year was worth.
It was also an inequity to have three schools with the service while others missed out, she said.
Dr Fairbairn agrees youth health services in the district need to be evenly spread, but she said taking away the free GP clinics from those who had them did not help young people at other schools who did not.
There were 9427 school students in Tairawhiti, including 2976 at high schools, as of July 1, 2019.
GP appointments are free for children aged under 14.
“I felt that at the very worst the DHB would have reduced the services to those three schools to increase services in other areas,” said Dr Fairbairn, who has offered to help the DHB develop its new youth health programme.
Mr Turner said the service appeared to tick all the boxes from the Ministry of Education's point of view, which is pushing for schools to be community hubs with a range of support services.
But it would appear the Ministry of Health, which funded DHBs, had a different kaupapa, he said.
Ms Ehau said funding for the in-school GP service contract would be reinvested in youth health services.
She warned that a general practice service may not be part of the DHB's redesigned youth health programme.
The DHB was increasingly being asked by the Government to improve the accessibility of healthcare to those who needed it most.
“They're not easy decisions to make, but at the end of the day that's our job.”
