Hospice services need full government funding

DEATH is not something we like to talk about much, but inevitably we are struck by it, often too soon.

About 60% of us will die of cancer or heart disease, often taking months or years. This ‘‘long dying’’ impacts us all. Our hospices help over half of us to die well. In 2021, of the 34,932 deaths in NZ, 20,000 people used hospice services.

As a healthcare and public health researcher, my experience is that hospice is best practice, holistic, patient and whanau care; clinical expertise combined with compassion and time. But the Ministry of Health funds only half of these services, and hospices have to fund, for example, in 2021, the $87 million shortfall.

It’s Hospice Awareness Week; let's remind our new health authorities that we all want to die well, with fully funded hospice care.

Social and Behavioural Research Unit, Te Hunga Rangahau Whanonga Papori codirector, Dunedin

Mosgiel subdivision

YOUR editorial ‘‘Caution needed on housing creep’’ (ODT, 16.5.22) is a timely reminder that any value of having spent millions of dollars of ratepayer funds preparing a district plan now appears to be fiddled with and changed before the ink has dried.

Could it be that we have a council that has so much debt it needs to increase its rate take as the only way to cover its massive spending, and is prepared to sacrifice its food producing soils to increase the rate take?

So much for the sustainability section of the district plan, and any chance of reducing and meeting our obligations under climate change, with our fruit and vegetables now having to be transported from many hundreds, and thousands of miles away. When we once (before amalgamation with the city) supplied all our own needs.

You point out in your editorial that only about 15% of our land is ideal for food production. The facts are that in the Otago province, only about 2% (and shrinking) of our soils are highclass. The majority of that could once be found on the Taieri Plain.

The way our council is performing, it might not be too long before our highclass soils map becomes redundant.

East Taieri [Abridged]