{"id":348343,"date":"2021-10-14T07:37:52","date_gmt":"2021-10-14T07:37:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asiapacificreport.nz\/?p=64757"},"modified":"2021-10-14T07:37:52","modified_gmt":"2021-10-14T07:37:52","slug":"maori-health-coalition-urges-return-to-nzs-covid-19-elimination-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/10\/14\/maori-health-coalition-urges-return-to-nzs-covid-19-elimination-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"M\u0101ori health coalition urges return to NZ\u2019s covid-19 elimination strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/authors\/jamie-tahana\">Jamie Tahana<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/international\">RNZ Pacific<\/a> journalist<\/em><\/p>\n<p>A coalition of M\u0101ori health organisations in Auckland is urging the New Zealand government to return to a covid-19 elimination strategy, saying many M\u0101ori will die if it does not.<\/p>\n<p>They say the government&#8217;s move to relax restrictions while the number of cases among M\u0101ori are rising and the vaccination rate is still low painted a picture of M\u0101ori as &#8220;acceptable collateral damage&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/453519\/covid-19-update-71-cases-in-the-community-today\">71 cases of covid-19 announced today<\/a>, 52 percent were M\u0101ori. Only 40 percent of the M\u0101ori population is fully vaccinated.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/453519\/covid-19-update-71-cases-in-the-community-today\"><strong>READ MORE:<\/strong> &#8216;Sobering rise&#8217; in NZ &#8211; 71 covid cases in the community today<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/asiapacificreport.nz\/?s=NZ+covid+lockdown\">Other NZ covid lockdown reports<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The coalition of H\u0101pai Te Hauora, Te Wh\u0101nau o Waipareira Trust, Te H\u0101 Oranga and Raukura Hauora o Tainui said the elimination strategy had acted as protective korowai while the vaccination programme caught up, but it had now been dropped.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That will no doubt result in loss of lives, with M\u0101ori being a major casualty,&#8221; they said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>The general manager of Ng\u0101ti Whatua provider Te H\u0101 Oranga, Boyd Broughton, said he was incredibly frustrated with the way the pandemic was panning out.<\/p>\n<p>Nearly two weeks after Auckland was moved to alert level 3, the number of cases was steadily growing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Running vaccination centres<\/strong><br \/>\nHis organisation had been busy across Auckland, running vaccination centres, setting up mobile clinics, helping get in contact with hard-to-reach communities.<\/p>\n<p>Things were catching up, he said, which was what made the shift especially frustrating.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s very disappointing when there&#8217;s a shift from the elimination strategy to a suppression strategy and it comes at a time when M\u0101ori case numbers are rising, our vaccination rates are still lower,&#8221; Broughton said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So that&#8217;s why we&#8217;re left with the impression that M\u0101ori are an accepted collateral damage from this government, and this government making decisions.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Health Minister Andrew Little rejected that assertion.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No not at all,&#8221; he replied when asked on RNZ <i>Midday Report<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s why we have the level 3 restrictions in place for the length of time that we have in Auckland, and we went into level 3 for Waikato and Northland when we thought there were risks there.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div class=\"photo-captioned photo-captioned-full photo-cntr eight_col \">\n<figure style=\"width: 720px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/assets\/news_crops\/80841\/eight_col_selah_hart.jpg?1559169367\" alt=\"Selah Hart from Hapai te Hauora,\" width=\"720\" height=\"450\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Selah Hart, chief executive of public health service H\u0101pai Te Hauora &#8230; &#8220;We want to ensure that &#8230; the system doesn&#8217;t turn its back on the forgotten people once again.&#8221; Image: Hapai te Hauora\/RNZ<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>Elimination more equitable<\/strong><br \/>\nBut public health service H\u0101pai Te Hauora chief executive Selah Hart said trying to eliminate covid-19 would be more equitable, as suppression would still see the virus in vulnerable M\u0101ori communities.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We as a country have missed many marks in being able to get us on track to ensuring that those who are always most underserved across any health statistics aren&#8217;t going to carry the weight of this pandemic on their shoulders,&#8221; Hart said.<\/p>\n<p>Hart said it was particularly disheartening to see what M\u0101ori health experts had warned about for nearly two years being borne out.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We want to ensure that those people don&#8217;t get forgotten about, that our communities that are now bearing the brunt of this thing are not forgotten about and that the system doesn&#8217;t turn its back on them once again,&#8221; she said, saying a familiar pattern of history was now repeating.<\/p>\n<p>Broughton said he understood patience with the lockdown was wearing thin, and it was a feeling held by many M\u0101ori wh\u0101nau too. But he said it would be different if there was better support for vulnerable wh\u0101nau to be able to stay home.<\/p>\n<p>Little said the government was putting significant effort into the vaccine rollout.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve seen an amazing surge of vaccinations for M\u0101ori and Pacific in the last couple of weeks,&#8221; Little said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s great, we want to continue that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Restrictions won&#8217;t be relaxed<\/strong><br \/>\nHe said restrictions won&#8217;t be relaxed further until the government saw sufficient levels of vaccination in all groups, including M\u0101ori.<\/p>\n<p>But Broughton said he had little faith.<\/p>\n<p>M\u0101ori health providers called for a different type of vaccine rollout early this year, but they were rebuffed and were now playing catch up. He said he had warned that static vaccine clinics would not reach M\u0101ori, and now they were having to play catch up with mobile clinics.<\/p>\n<p>Now, he said M\u0101ori providers were being dumped in an avoidable catch-up position yet again.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We raised these issues that where they&#8217;ve put things doesn&#8217;t work, how they&#8217;re delivering doesn&#8217;t work, the messaging doesn&#8217;t work.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But the decision-makers are non-M\u0101ori and we&#8217;re having to tidy up, essentially.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He was worried the government had buckled too early, putting wh\u0101nau at great risk.<\/p>\n<p>In the coalition statement, the head of Wh\u0101nau o Waipareira Trust, John Tamihere, had a warning for the government.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If M\u0101ori lives are lost because of this denial, we will take civil action in manslaughter,&#8221; Tamihere said.<\/p>\n<p><em>This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.<\/em><\/p>\n\n<p class=\"syndicated-attribution\">This post was originally published on <a href=\"https:\/\/asiapacificreport.nz\/2021\/10\/14\/maori-health-coalition-urges-return-to-nzs-covid-19-elimination-strategy\/\">Asia Pacific Report<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Jamie Tahana, RNZ Pacific journalist A coalition of M\u0101ori health organisations in Auckland is urging the New Zealand government to return to a covid-19 elimination strategy, saying many M\u0101ori will die if it does not. They say the government\u2019s move to relax restrictions while the number of cases among M\u0101ori are rising and the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":400,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[338,35498,304,34363,5,365,387,6,7,118,25643,255,12,403,14,1573,1716,368,36899,36900],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348343"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/400"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348343"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":348411,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348343\/revisions\/348411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}