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Māori health professionals are banding together to make sure Māori needs are in front of mind for all those who are working on responding to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Te Rōpū Whakakaupapa Urutā member Rawiri Jansen, a south Auckland GP, says they have established a website to collect together all the information needed by ordinary Māori, by health professionals and by marae and iwi as they plan for the days and weeks ahead.

He says doing it in a Māori way means understanding what needs to go into the packs being prepared to help households deal with the lockdown.

"So doing it in a Māori way for me means we understand the context of that whānau – how many people living in that house – so we don't send a pack suitable for two adults and two children to a household that has six adults and seven children. Doing it in a Māori way says that we are going to look after whānau in the way that whānau are set up," he says.

Dr Jansen says the lockdown is absolutely the right thing to do, based on what has been learned by looking at data from countries like China, Iran and Italy which have been dealing with the coronavirus for longer.

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