Napier’s mayor is backing a public protest against a Health NZ proposal to remove in-person overnight urgent health care in the city.
The Hands Around Napier Health Centre rally to be held next Sunday, March 23, was revealed on Thursday night at a public meeting amid concerns about the potential for diminished overnight health care as part of a still-to-be-confirmed shakeup of the Wellesley Rd facility.
About 120 people attended the meeting, including Mayor Kirsten Wise and six of her 12 councillors.
Proposed changes of concern included the use of Telehealth consultation instead of face-to-face assessment, with Health New Zealand previously determining overnight presentations at the centre – under seven per night on average – did not justify the fuller service.
Opponents at the meeting said the numbers have dwindled because of a diminished service and that has led to a greater level of presentation at the Hawke’s Bay Hospital Emergency Department, adding to the pressures on the Hastings facilities.
They also claimed the services now available do not meet government promises made when Napier lost its public hospital in the 1990s – leading to eventual demolition – and obligations set when the hospital land was first vested in health services in the 1800s.
The mayor was one of five guest speakers, led by facilitator Malcolm Mulholland of Patient Voice Aotearoa, and followed by Opposition Labour health spokeswoman and former Minister of Health Dr Ayesha Verrall, Hauora Taiwhenua Rural Health Network clinical director Dr Jeremy Webber, and a New Zealand Nurses Organisation representative.
Those present added more than 100 signatures to the Buller Declaration, a scroll promoted by Patient Voice Aotearoa in response to public and health professional concerns, initially about lost services on the West Coast of the South Island.
Wise pledged her support and that of the council, and later said she would start work “in the morning” helping facilitate the rally.
The event is billed as a 1pm gathering around the health centre in Wellesley Rd, but may be preceded by a march similar to a Dunedin protest said to have attracted 35,000 people asking the Government to keep a promise of a new hospital in the city.
Wise said: “I fully support [the rally]. I strongly urge you to sign the declaration, and support the action”.
Wise says Health New Zealand decisions around Napier Health Centre do not take into account the type of circumstances exposed in Cyclone Gabrielle, when two inter-city link bridges were downed and land access to and from a city bounded by rivers and the sea was severed for a week.
On the wider scale, Wise said she had family experience of the pressure funding cuts and staff shortages had imposed on doctors, nurses and those training for medical careers.
“Something needs to change. It hardly surprises me we have a lack of nurses. It’s too hard.”
Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 52 years of journalism experience, 42 of them in Hawke’s Bay, in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues, and personalities.