April 11, 2022
Bloomfield thanked for Covid response
A south Auckland Māori health leader is praising outgoing Health Chief Dr Ashley Bloomfield for his leadership through the pandemic.
Dr Bloomfield has announced he will step down as Director-General in July, a year before his term was due to expire.
Dr Lily Fraser, the clinical director at Turuki Health, says historically epidemics and pandemics have represented a major threat to indigenous and first nations populations.
She says if the Alpha and Delta variants of Covid-19 had been handled differently, the consequences for Aotearoa could have been devastating,
“I am forever going to be grateful that this is how we have experienced the pandemic. It’s quite scary to see the number of deaths we are experiencing now, but we know that with the previous Covid variants, it would have been much, much, much worse,” Dr Fraser says.
People have been able to find a hospital bed if they needed one, unlike in many countries where health systems were overwhelmed.