West Coast DHB Member Resigns in Protest

Media Release
Tuesday 27 January 2009

West Coast DHB Member Resigns in Protest

West Coast DHB elected board member David Tranter has resigned in protest over what he labels board secrecy and anti-health professional agendas which recently culminated in the loss of three top class, long-serving anaesthetists from Grey Hospital within a very short space of time.

Mr. Tranter, who is also the Democrats for Social Credit health spokesman and has campaigned for rural health services since 1991, said today that he has more chance of informing the public on health issues outside the Ministry and corporate management-controlled DHB, and called for an end to the political agenda that has seen all three board chairmen since 2001 appointed from outside the Coast.

"Having chairmen from Wellington, then Auckland and now Christchurch, in my opinion, has always mitigated against West Coast interests and has plumbed new depths with the current chair having no previous relevant experience whatsoever in the health sector and no meaningful connection with West Coast communities" Mr. Tranter said.

"There are a number of Coasters with both the relevant background and understanding of Coast concerns to chair the DHB board and in my view Coast leaders and the public should demand that a local person be appointed as chair".

Mr. Tranter also cites the Coast PHO chair being appointed from elsewhere as a further instance of Coasters being barred from having control of their health services. "The present chair, John Ayling, not only lives at the top of the South Island but as the former CEO of the Otago DHB when that organisation was closing Otago's rural hospitals it is difficult to see how he can make any meaningful contribution regarding local communities’ rural health concerns which can only be understood fully by someone on the spot and who is committed to a local community", Mr. Tranter said.

Mr. Tranter's most immediate concern is for the future of Grey Hospital.

"While the final decision on what services will remain is unknown – although it is probably already decided in Wellington - my 18 years of seeing political and bureaucratic promises made and broken regarding rural hospitals the length and breadth of New Zealand convinces me that Grey Hospital is at grave risk of being severely down-graded.

“The term 'one-stop-health-shop' has repeatedly come to mean a medical centre instead of an existing hospital throughout rural New Zealand. With that term now being bandied about regarding Greymouth, West Coast community leaders and the public need to start fighting now to retain full hospital services instead of trusting a system which has dismally failed many rural communities since the corporatisation of health management in the early 90s" he said.

ENDS

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