It seems that the Ministry of Health is now concerned that women may get the wrong message and think that they no longer need regular cervical smears after they have had the cervical cancer vaccine, Gardasil. The MacDoctor wishes to point out that he made this exact point nearly two years ago. He wonders how [...]

The debate on the size of the public service is always fun to watch. Labour has been digging for information on planned cuts to the public service and has some cabinet papers that show National is planning to cut 470 jobs by the end of 2011 (Labour managed to read this as 460 jobs by [...]

Audrey Young reports that the government say they will not scrap Pharmac as part of a free-trade deal with the US. Actually, National is being quite a bit more cagey than that. Tony Ryall is simply not commenting and Tim Groser is being positively vague as this shows: He said Pharmac was an outstandingly successful [...]

Australia’s chief medical officer, Jim Bishop has announced that children under five years old should not receive the flu vaccine. Apparently at least 60 children under the age of 5 have had high fevers and 23 have had convulsions shortly after receiving the vaccine. I have not heard any advisory from the New Zealand authorities [...]

Congratulations to Tony Ryall who has, in a first for a government, delivered his primary election health promise – a significant rise in elective surgery. And handsomely too: The number of elective operation increased by 11,900 on 2008 and National’s target was a mere 4,000. This post is not about Mr. Ryall’s good news, but [...]

New Zealand is now contemplating using the same set of incentives to boost immunisation rates that Australia used to boost it’s rates from 50% to 91%. The MacDoctor is not convinced that New Zealanders will respond quite as well as Australians to the incentives. The incentives were: Cash payments to parents for completing immunisations at [...]

The Timaru Herald has run an article on the website offtheradar.co.nz, who are calling for the removal of Gardasil from the vaccination regime because it causes 16 times more serious adverse events than it prevents cervical cancer fatalities. Like most of the websites “crusading” against vaccines, it destroys its own credibility by drawing non-scientific conclusions [...]

I see an number of doctors are voicing their concerns of the government interest in a Pharmac-like organisation to take over hospital based purchases. Not without good reason, I might add. The Pharmac model has a major flaw. That flaw is that the model is based on the free availability of cheap “equivalents”. There is [...]

Not satisfied with rendering cold and flu medicines ineffective by removing pseudoephedrine from general sale, Medsafe continues it’s onslaught on cold and flu meds by trying to remove all the syrups and infusions from supermarket shelves. Apparently they are concerned about the use of them in under sixes (despite the fact that fatalities are very [...]

I have finally managed to sit down and finish Gareth Morgan’s book, Health Cheque,  on the New Zealand health care system (long international flights are at least good for something). I find most of Morgan’s books a little superficial for my tastes and Health Cheque is certainly no exception, lacking, as it does, any deep [...]