Free under 13’s doctor visits welcomed

 

Northland MP Mike Sabin has joined Health Minister Jonathan Cole-man in welcoming North-land’s decision to fund free doctor visits and pre-scriptions for under 13s.

From 1 July 2015 the Government is investing $90 million over three years to provide free doc-tor visits and prescrip-tions for all children aged under 13 years.

Northland’s two Pri-mary Health Organisa-tions (PHO), Manaia

Health and Te Tai Toker-au, and Northland DHB have joined together to fund the early roll-out of the initiative, which is expected to cost around $450,000.

“We see DHBs and PHOs best placed to re-spond to local need, while government seeks to provide more services through primary care,” says Mr Sabin.

“This initiative in Northland will mean an extra 16,000 school children can receive free doc-tor visits and prescrip-tions until the policy is implemented across the country next year.”

Northland’s health-care providers have re-sponded quickly to sup-port the initiative, with all 153 GPs from the 38 general practices in the region signing up.

Health advocate and past Northland DHB board member, Libby

Jones, says the new ini-tiative did not original-ly include the hundreds of children living in the south of Northland.

“Our area, which straddles the borders of both Northland and Wait-emata DHBs, has now been included which is great news for our com-munities,” she says.

“Our area includes approximately 7000 peo-ple who live in Kaiwa-ka, Mangawhai, Maun-gaturoto and Paparoa districts, and 640 of these are in the age range 6–12 years. This means that all children under 13 in Northland will now re-ceive free health care pri-or to the nationwide roll-out on 1 July 2015.”