Free health clinic looking to expand

Julie Beach set up the Family First Health Centre in Ngongotaha. Photo / Stephen Parker

A Ngongotaha woman is looking for funding to help expand her voluntary health service aimed at raising the welfare of elderly in the area.

Julie Beach was driven to set up the Family First Health Centre Whanau Pokapu Hauora Tuatahi, a free health service, after noticing the marae in the area had lost most of its elderly men.

"They've all died before reaching their 70s and nine times out of 10 it was due to something easily fixed that they couldn't afford to get treated."

Mrs Beach was born and bred in Ngongotaha and said she had a strong affinity with her community and home town.

"Ngongotaha is an isolated community with one medical centre."

She said many people in the community were not receiving medical treatment and were "falling through the gaps".

"Our service acts as a net to catch those people and give them basic medical help for free before referring them on to the Ngongotaha Medical Centre."

Mrs Beach and eight voluntary workers started offering their services in April. The team, made up of registered nurses, social workers, and health educators offer blood pressure checks, blood sugar checks, health education, mirimiri (massage), quit smoking referrals, health and exercise programmes, depression and anxiety support, gambling support and internet addiction support.

Currently the volunteers operate out of the Ngongotaha Community Hall once a week.

However, Mrs Beach said the group wanted to expand to three or four days a week to "accommodate the growing need in the area".

"We complement the medical services in the area and just want to do what we can to help the people in our community.

"We are self-funded, but in order to expand, we will need to look at external funding."

Lakes District Health Board general manager planning and funding Mary Smith said the board applauded the creation of voluntary groups that worked with communities to offer support to the elderly and complementary therapies but the groups were generally not funded.

"The district health board does provide a small amount of funding to providers of rongoa services (traditional Maori medicine), in the Lakes district but there is no plan to extend these services."

Ms Smith said anyone could set up free health services, as long as they did not make false claims about their qualifications or profess to be able to do things they were unable to do.

"They must operate within the law, and be transparent about what services they are offering."

Ms Smith said the board was looking at competing financial pressures and would only fund services for which there was compelling evidence of effectiveness, and the existence of need that was not able to be filled by other funded services.

"In short, if the service was considered to be a core health service then the district health board would be funding it."

The Ngongotaha Medical Centre could not be reached for comment.