The decision of the health select committee that there will be no National Prostate cancer screening can only be described as short-sighted. Once again, the opportunity to create a world class preventative health program is slipping through our fingers. Conventional thinking, like that exhibited by Associate Professor Brian Cox of the Dunedin School of Medicine, dictates [...]

No Right Turn posts on the news that Ruanui Hospital in Taihape is being closed, commenting that this is the opposite to National’s claim of “better, faster, more convenient health care”. He would have been right if the news had been true. Unfortunately, both he and the residents of Taihape are deceived – there has [...]

Spam Journalism: The spurious use of sensational headlines to add spice to an otherwise pointless article I was amused to see this article is the Herald yesterday. Talk about trying to rehash old news… Two more deaths but swine flu cases fall Twenty deaths this year have been swine flu-related but health authorities say the [...]

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 [...]