Rot, mould symbol of poor health
If you wanted to devise a metaphor for a failing health system, you could not do better than images of toxic mould and rot, leaking sewage and power failures at Aucklands’ Middlemore Hospital. It is as though underfunding had taken on physical form at a hospital that serves some of the most deprived communities in the country.
The new Government has inherited these problems from a National Government that prided itself on running a tight financial ship. Even as recently as this week, when worsening news about Middlemore appeared in the media, new National leader Simon Bridges stuck to a script about prudent financial management and passed the buck back to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Health Minister David Clark.
But the responsibility for this and other problems of underfunding and general neglect in the health system really need to be sheeted home to former Health Minister Jonathan Coleman.
Many National MPS are said to quietly blame Coleman for their 2017 election result as both health and mental health became political quagmires.
But no one knew quite how bad things had become until news broke about Middlemore. Repairs are expected to cost Counties Manukau Health around $27 million. Ardern has said that Middlemore is only part of the picture of a wider system whose deficits and capital issues are worse than she anticipated.
Many are disappointed that Coleman’s sudden departure from politics means he will not face the music over Middlemore. An interview on RNZ’S Morning Report ended with the former minister hanging up when questions about Middlemore were asked.
It was a sad but symbolic end for Coleman.
More crucially, what did Coleman know about Middlemore? Bridges has said his Government knew about the need for extra capital but not about the specifics of its buildings. Others have said that the problem of toxic mould at Middlemore was an open secret in Wellington.
Writing at the Spinoff website, Dr David Galler, an intensive care specialist at Middlemore and author of a book called Things That Matter: Stories About Life and Death, showed there is more to the Middlemore story than politics. He wrote that Counties Manukau Health ‘‘serves a population of more than 600,000 people with at least one third of them living in significant poverty’’.
The majority have what Galler calls the south Auckland full house, ‘‘a six-card hand of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, chronic kidney disease and gout’’. It is important to see the human face and human cost behind health stories and the abstract sums of millions of dollars that are casually flung about. Every day, Galler and others see the ordinary people who have been badly let down by Coleman and his colleagues.