Health dilemmas

May I say I have sympathy for the Tongan facing deportation (News, January 28). Now he is here we have an obligation to extend treatment to him as an act of compassion, but unless he can pay for it, he will be an imposition on our public health system, further extending the waiting list system for New Zealanders.

I recently went through 18 months of of virtual torture awaiting treatment through our public health system and I know of others who could not wait and spent $15,000 and more to get private treatment, when, as New Zealand citizens, they were entitled to treatment via our public health system.

With increasing numbers of tourists visiting and significant numbers skipping the country without paying for health treatment, it is past time to make it compulsory for all visitors to have travel insurance. If they don’t, then put them on the first plane back to where they came from.

Don McKay, Lower Hutt

Tamahanga Tukunga, a 24-year-old Tongan man with kidney failure, faces deportation to almost certain death as Tonga does not have a dialysis unit.

The same day we read that a 15-year-old South African, Ethan Von Metzinger, also with a kidney condition and having lived here with his family for nine years, is being deported to South Africa.

Are we not being hypocritical when our prime minister goes on the world stage at the United Nations and rightly highlights the Australian government’s cruel treatment of refugees in the hellholes that are Nauru and Manus islands, and offers our assistance to resettle 150 of those poor souls a year?

Surely the Tongan man and South African teen are as entitled to our compassion and humanitarian help as the refugees our Government rightly wants to help.

Jim Friel, Wellington