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Download AudioHealth Minister Shane Reti says a needs-based approach combined with targeting is the best way to address Māori health inequities.
The minister is under fire for ordering Health New Zealand Hawke’s Bay to drop criteria which allowed young Māori to get free doctors’ visits until they reached the age of 24.
Former Te Aka Whai Ora chief medical officer Rawiri McKree Jansen says the result will be Māori miss out, but Dr Reti says initiatives like the $50 million immunisation programme using Whānau Ora providers is an example of what is expected.
“When the providers go into those rural communities, they will put a needle into a white arm as well as a brown arm. They’re there to serve a universal audience, but they have a mechanism to reach areas that the mainstream cannot. And so Rawiri and I fundamentally are talking the same thing. The first principle is need, where the need is, is where the resources should go. And surprise, surprise. Māori then sit on top of that need tree,” he says,
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