Moves by the Trump administration to draw up a new regulatory framework for types of toxic chemicals has sparked suspicion among health advocates who fear the changes will protect polluters but not public health. The concerns come after U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin on Monday rolled out preliminary plans to tackle widespread environmental contamination by…
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By Ruth Hill, RNZ News reporter
Striking senior New Zealand doctors have hit back at the Health Minister’s attack on their union for “forcing” patients to wait longer for surgery and appointments, due to their 24-hour industrial action.
Respiratory and sleep physician Dr Andrew Davies, who was on the picketline outside Wellington Regional Hospital, said for him and his colleagues, it was “not about the money” — it was about the inability to recruit.
“We’ve got vacant jobs that we’re not allowed to advertise,” he said. “It’s lies that they’re not getting rid of frontline staff.
“The job is technically there on paper, but if you’re not going to advertise for the job, you’re not going to fill it.
“In our department, we’ve waited months and months and months to fill some jobs, and you don’t just get a doctor next week. It takes six months for them to come.”
Dr Davies said no-one wanted to strike and have their patients miss out on care, but thousands of patients were already missing out on care every day, due to staff shortages.
“Every week, we’ve got empty clinics,” he said. “There is space in the clinics that’s not being used, because there’s not a doctor in the chair there.
“While, today, that’s 20 percent of the work of the week gone, because we’re on strike, in some departments, it’s 20 percent every week.
“Every day of the week, there’s a 20 percent deficit in the number of patients people are seeing.”
5500 doctors on strike
Nationwide, about 5500 members of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists are on strike until 11:59pm today, causing the cancellation of about 4300 planned procedures and specialist appointments.
In a social media post, Health Minister Simeon Brown blamed the union for the disruption, saying an updated offer last week — including a $25,000 bonus for those moving to “hard-to-staff regions” — was rejected by the union, before members even saw it.
Union executive director Sarah Dalton said she would be very happy to facilitate a meeting between doctors and the minister — or he could accept the invitation to attend its national conference.
“They would love to feel like someone up there was listening,” she said. “They don’t at the moment.
“We need to move away from rhetoric, and actually have some time and space for meaningful discussion.
“That’s one of the reasons we’re on strike today. After eight months of negotiating, there was nothing on the table from the employer.
“It was only after we called for strike action that anything changed, so let’s do better.”
Critical workforce shortages were undermining patient care and the current pay offer, which amounted to an increase of less than one percent a year for most doctors, would do nothing to fix that, Dalton said.
“How do you tackle vacancies? You put more time and effort in good terms and conditions for your permanent workforce, and you stop spending spending $380 million a year on locums and temps.
“We shouldn’t have that heavy reliance on those people, so we’ve got to change it.”
NZ training doctors for Australia
After many years of study subsidised by the New Zealand taxpayer, Maeve Hume-Nixon recently qualified as a public health specialist, but may yet end up going overseas.
“I actually thought last year that I would have to go to Australia, where I would be paid another $100,000 minimum, because there were no jobs for me here, basically.
“In the end, I managed to get an emergency extension to my contract and this has continued, but I don’t have security and it’s a pretty frustrating position to be in.”
Neurologist Dr Maas Mollenhauer said he was not able to access the tests he needed to provide care for his patients.
“I’ve seen patients that I have sent for urgent imaging, but they didn’t receive it, and then I got an email from one of my colleagues who was on call, telling me that patient had rocked up to the Emergency Department and, basically, the front half of their skull was full of brain tumour.”
Cancer patients waiting too long
Medical oncologist Dr Sharon Pattison said the health system had reached the point where it was so starved of people and resources, it had become “inefficient”.
“Everyone is waiting for everything, so everything takes longer, and we are waiting until people get seriously ill, before we do anything about it.”
The government’s “faster cancer treatment time” target — 90 percent of patients receiving cancer management within 31 days of the decision to treat — would not give the true picture of what was happening for patients, she said.
“For instance, if I have someone with a potential diagnosis of cancer, there are so many points at which they are waiting — waiting for scan, waiting for a biopsy, waiting for a radiologist to report the scan to show us where to get the biopsy.
“That radiologist may be overseas, so if I want to talk to that specialist I can’t do that. Then the wait for a pathologist to report on the biopsy can now take up to 6-8 weeks.
“We know that, for some people with cancer, if you wait for that long before we can even make your treatment plan, we’re going to make your outcomes worse.
“The whole system is at the point where we are making people more unwell, because we can’t do what we should be doing for them in the framework that we need to.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Asia Pacific Report
Thousands of senior hospital doctors and specialists walked off the job today for an unprecedented 24-hour strike in protest over stalled contract negotiations and thousands of other health workers protested across Aotearoa New Zealand against the coalition government’s cutbacks to the public health service Te Whatu Ora.
In spite of the disruptive bad weather across the country, protesters were out in force expressing their concerns over a national health service in crisis.
Among speakers criticising the government’s management of public health at a rally at the entrance to The Domain, near Auckland Hospital, many warned that the cutbacks were a prelude to “creeping privatisation”.
“Health cuts hurt services, the patients who rely on them, and the workers who deliver them,” said health worker Jason Brooke.
“Under this coalition government we’ve seen departments restructured, roles disestablished, change proposals enacted, and hiring freezes implemented.
“Make no mistake. This is austerity. This is managed decline.
“The coalition can talk all they like about spending more on healthcare, the reality for ‘those-of-us-on-the-ground’ is that we know that money is not being spent where it’s needed.”
Placards said “Fight back together for the workers”, “Proud to be union”, “We’re fighting back for workers rights”, and one poster declared: “Don’t bite the hand that wipes your bum — safe staffing now”.
Palestine supporters also carried a May Day message of solidarity from Palestinian Confederation of Trade Unions.
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Over the last couple of weeks, even as tariffs have wreaked havoc on markets around the world, President Donald Trump and U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have repeatedly teased the notion of slapping hefty tariffs on imported pharmaceuticals. Lutnick has said these are likely to be introduced before the summer. Trump’s rationale for placing tariffs on medical drugs is, like most of his…
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The Biden administration supervised the largest repeal in social benefits in U.S. history upon declaring the COVID-19 pandemic over. The Trump administration appears to be surpassing that feat, rapidly winding down the project called the United States. The fallout includes the health of the American people. In recent weeks, we’ve seen billions slashed from state health programs…
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Despite the self-imposed chaos disrupting the federal government, public health watchdogs say the Trump administration’s strategy for axing pollution protections on behalf of its allies in wealthy industries is more sophisticated than what was seen during the president’s first term. Advocates for communities overburdened by industrial pollution and the impacts of climate change say years of…
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Millions of people across the United States could be drinking water contaminated with dangerous levels of substances created when utilities disinfect water tainted with animal manure and other pollutants, according to a report released Thursday. An analysis of testing results from community water systems in 49 states found that nearly 6,000 such systems serving 122 million people recorded an…
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Tsu-Yin Wu was shocked when the email from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) showed up in her inbox. On March 21, just 18 months into her five-year study, the NIH had unilaterally decided that Wu’s research “no longer effectuates agency priorities.” The project’s funding, like hundreds of other NIH grants across the country, was terminated immediately. Wu, a nursing professor and…
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In the past six months, two babies in Louisiana have died of pertussis, the disease commonly known as whooping cough. Washington state recently announced its first confirmed death from pertussis in more than a decade. Idaho and South Dakota each reported a death this year, and Oregon last year reported two as well as its highest number of cases since 1950. While much of the country…
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Cities and states fighting a historic measles outbreak find themselves undermined by the Trump administration as they struggle to provide crucial vaccinations and overcome disinformation. As of this week, cases were nearing 650 in 22 states, on track to reach a 34-year high. A second unvaccinated child died of measles in West Texas last week. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F.
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In 2011, I, Deepti Pradhan, was diagnosed with breast cancer. A year of surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation followed, leaving lasting effects. In December 2023, I, Christine Ngaruiya, got a call from my parents — my mother, a two-time breast cancer survivor, had something suspicious on a routine mammogram. My heart sank. As a physician, I knew a third breast cancer was unlikely — but I also…
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Kelly Smith, a 57-year-old New York City resident, is part of the Nonviolent Medicaid Army (NVMA), a growing national movement of poor people who are organizing to stop proposed cuts to Medicaid and promote health care as a human right. “The need for health care unites us all,” Smith told Truthout. “Right now, I’m terrified of losing Medicaid and being unable to get injections for pain…
Workers at one of the nation’s largest baby formula plants say the Abbott Laboratories facility is engaging in unsanitary practices similar to those that led it to temporarily shut down just three years ago, sparking a nationwide formula shortage. Current and former employees told ProPublica that they have seen the plant in Sturgis, Michigan, take shortcuts when cleaning manufacturing…
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Echoing a party-line vote by the U.S. Senate Finance Committee last week, the chamber’s Republicans on Thursday confirmed President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, former televison host Dr. Mehmet Oz. Since Trump nominated Oz — who previously ran as a Republican for a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania — a wide range of critics have argued that the…
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The National Institutes of Health will no longer be funding work on the health effects of climate change, according to internal records reviewed by ProPublica. The guidance, which was distributed to several staffers last week, comes on the back of multiple new directives to cut off NIH funding to grants that are focused on subjects that are viewed as conflicting with the Trump administration’…
Unproven remedies for treating measles peddled by Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are complicating doctors’ efforts to deal with an outbreak in West Texas. The “remedies” are being utilized primarily by parents — many of whom have anti-vaccine views — to treat and prevent measles in their children, and include consuming high doses of vitamin A…
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Growing up in the early 2000s, my mother instilled within me certain precepts: eat your vegetables, avoid processed foods, recycle. Buying organic was preferable, but often cost-prohibitive. Ideally, you’d want to be able to pronounce the words on a label. Red dye 40 and sugary breakfast cereals were no-nos — though sometimes she could be convinced otherwise. All of these principles, she said…
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A little past 4 a.m. on June 21, 2019, workers at the Philadelphia Energy Solutions oil refinery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, noticed a leak from a corroded pipe, and were immediately on high alert. The leak had originated in Unit 433, known among workers as the “bogeyman” because it contained the highly explosive chemical hydrofluoric acid, or HF. When released in large quantities…
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Experts and former employees say the Trump administration’s moves to fire key scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and dismantle clean air and water protections will make the United States a “sicker and poorer” place to live while demoralizing the next generation of environmental investigators and public health researchers. The rollbacks could lead to a significant increase…
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With its measles outbreak spreading to two additional states, Texas is on track to becoming the cause of a national epidemic if it doesn’t start vaccinating more people, according to public health experts. Measles, a highly contagious disease that was declared eliminated from the U.S. in 2000, has made a resurgence in West Texas communities, jumping hundreds of miles to the northern border of…
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This month marks the five-year anniversary of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has killed 1.2 million people in the US alone. While life has returned to normal for most Americans, the threats to our health haven’t disappeared.
On this week’s episode of More To The Story, infectious disease epidemiologist Jessica Malaty Rivera talks with host Al Letson about the collision course between the Trump administration’s health priorities and our developing public health emergencies, including the spread of bird flu and the ongoing measles outbreaks. We’ve not only failed to learn our lessons from the pandemic, she argues, but we also might be stumbling into the next one.
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Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producers: Nikki Frick and Artis Curiskis | Interim executive producers: Taki Telonidis and Brett Myers | Host: Al Letson
Listen: The Covid Tracking Project (Reveal)
Read: Avian Flu Could Define Trump’s Second Presidency (Mother Jones)
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American families will face increasing rates of environmental-related illnesses and premature deaths, including lung and cardiovascular diseases, due to the Trump administration’s sweeping rollbacks of air quality regulations, health professionals warn. The moves to slash roughly two dozen environmental and public health protections weaken rules dealing with a range of health threats…
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A Trump administration move to axe key food safety advisory committees could leave the public more vulnerable to food-borne illnesses, critics fear, particularly alongside current legislative efforts to undermine proposed safety regulations on food processors. The decision to cut the committees, which brought together academics, industry researchers and consumer advocates to advise agencies…
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ANALYSIS: By Peter Davis
With the sudden departure of New Zealand’s Reserve Bank Governor, one has to ask whether there is a pattern here — of a succession of public sector leaders leaving their posts in uncertain circumstances and a series of decisions being made without much regard for due process.
It brings to mind the current spectacle of federal government politics playing out in the United States. Four years ago, we observed a concerted attempt by a raucous and determined crowd to storm the Capitol.
Now a smaller, more disciplined and just as determined band is entering federal offices in Washington almost unhindered, to close agencies and programmes and to evict and terminate the employment of thousands of staff.
This could never happen here. Or could it? Or has it and is it happening here? After all, we had an occupation of parliament, we had a rapid unravelling of a previous government’s legislative programme, and we have experienced the removal of CEOs and downgrading of key public agencies such as Kāinga Ora on slender pretexts, and the rapid and marked downsizing of the core public service establishment.
Similarly, while the incoming Trump administration is targeting any federal diversity agenda, in New Zealand the incoming government has sought to curb the advancement of Māori interests, even to the extent of questioning elements of our basic constitutional framework.
In other words, there are parallels, but also differences. This has mostly been conducted in a typical New Zealand low-key fashion, with more regard for legal niceties and less of the histrionics we see in Washington — yet it still bears comparison and probably reflects similar political dynamics.
Nevertheless, the departure in quick succession of three health sector leaders and the targeting of Pharmac’s CEO suggest the agenda may be getting out of hand. In my experience of close contact with the DHB system the management and leadership teams at the top echelon were nothing short of outstanding.
The Auckland District Health Board, as it then was, is the largest single organisation in Auckland — and the top management had to be up to the task. And they were.
Value for money
As for Pharmac, it is a standout agency for achieving value for money in the public sector. So why target it? The organisation has made cumulative savings of at least a billion dollars, equivalent to 5 percent of the annual health budget. Those monies have been reinvested elsewhere in the health sector. Furthermore, by distancing politicians from sometimes controversial funding decisions on a limited budget it shields them from public blowback.
Unfortunately, Pharmac is the victim of its own success: the reinvestment of funds in the wider health sector has gone unheralded, and the shielding of politicians is rarely acknowledged.
The job as CEO at Pharmac has got much harder with a limited budget, more expensive drugs targeting smaller groups, more vociferous patient groups — sometimes funded in part by drug companies — easy media stories (individuals being denied “lifesaving” treatments), and, more recently, less sympathetic political masters.
Perhaps it was time for a changing of the guard, but the ungracious manner of it follows a similar pattern of other departures.
The arrival of Sir Brian Roche as the new Public Service Commissioner may herald a more considered approach to public sector reform, rather than the slightly “wild west” New Zealand style with the unexplained abolition of the Productivity Commission, the premature ending of an expensive pumped hydro study, disbandment of sector industry groups, and the alleged cancellation of a large ferry contract by text, among other examples of a rather casual approach to due process.
The danger we run is that the current cleaning out of public sector leaders is more than an expected turnover with a change of government, and rather a curbing of independent advice and thought. Will our public media agencies — TVNZ and RNZ — be next in line for the current thrust of popular and political attention?
Major redundancies
Taken together with the abolition of the Productivity Commission, major redundancies in the public sector, the removal of research funding for the humanities and the social sciences, a campaign by the Free Speech Union against university autonomy, the growing reliance on business lobbyists and lobby groups to determine decision-making, and the recent re-orientation of The New Zealand Herald towards a more populist stance, we could well be witnessing a concerted rebalancing of the ecosystem of advice and thought.
In half a century of observing policy and politics from the relative safety of the university, I have never witnessed such a concerted campaign as we are experiencing. Not even in the turmoil of the 1990s.
We need to change the national conversation before it is too late and we lose more of the key elements of the independence of advice and thought that we have established in the state and allied and quasi-autonomous agencies, as well as in the universities and the creative industries, and that lie at the heart of liberal democracy.
Dr Peter Davis is emeritus professor of population health and social science at Auckland University, and a former elected member of the Auckland District Health Board. This article was first published by The Post and is republished with the author’s permission
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
With vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. now in control of the Department of Health and Human Services, state-level anti-vax politicians believe their moment has struck to fundamentally shift the country away from mass vaccination programs. As a result, the U.S. stands on the edge of a series of cascading public health crises. Today marks the fifth anniversary of the World Health…
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March 11 marks the fifth anniversary of the day the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, urging countries to “double down” on protective actions. But for incarcerated people, many of those protections remained out of reach. When COVID-19 hit the United States, the millions of people incarcerated here were dealt structural blows from every direction. From the virus’s rapid spread…
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Five years ago, Melanie Richburg used a roll of duct tape, a HEPA filter and a portable fan to draw contaminated air out of a hospital room where patients were tested for the coronavirus. Now, as the state’s largest measles outbreak in three decades sickens an increasing number of Texans in the South Plains region, the Lynn County Hospital District, where Richburg serves as the chief…
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Employees at the National Cancer Institute, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, received internal guidance last week to flag manuscripts, presentations or other communications for scrutiny if they addressed “controversial, high profile, or sensitive” topics. Among the 23 hot-button issues, according to internal records reviewed by ProPublica: vaccines, fluoride, peanut allergies…
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For decades, Republican lawmakers and industry lobbyists have tried to chip away at the small program in the Environmental Protection Agency that measures the threat of toxic chemicals. Most people don’t know IRIS, as the program is called, but it is the scientific engine of the agency that protects human health and the environment. Its scientists assess the toxicity of chemicals…
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The week after the Eaton and Palisades fires tore across Los Angeles, clear blue skies shone over the city. Residents consulted their weather apps; the Air Quality Index (AQI) was surprisingly favorable. It seemed impossible that, just days prior, two of the most destructive wildfires in California history had unleashed toxic smoke and made thick ash rain for miles. But looks — and AQIs — can…
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