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Health specialist: Maori families still experience racism from Plunket

Author
Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date
Mon, 19 Jul 2021, 11:46AM
A scheme aimed at encouraging Maori parents to vaccinate their children has been canned. (Photo / File)
A scheme aimed at encouraging Maori parents to vaccinate their children has been canned. (Photo / File)

Health specialist: Maori families still experience racism from Plunket

Author
Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date
Mon, 19 Jul 2021, 11:46AM

A scheme that gave incentives to Māori families to encourage them to get their children vaccinated has been canned.

The move comes after a review found the barrier to immunisation is the inherently racist and culturally incompetent health system.

Counties Manukau DHB concluded that the year-long pilot - where families got the likes of nappies and grocery vouchers - didn't make a clear difference.

Instead, the Board is calling on health workers to be better trained to counter white privilege and stereotyping.

Dr Rawiri Jansen, the clinical director at The National Hauora Coalition, told Mike Yardley thousands of dollars have been wasted on these giveaways, but he is pleased by the report.

"They got a really hard-hitting report about it, they've looked into it. It's important that when money's spent they do an evaluation and find out if it worked and in this case, it clearly didn't work. They've done a good enough report to find why it didn't work.

"Plunket as an organisation, which historically founded by Truby King - a white supremacist, is still a racist organisation and Māori families experience that racism from the Plunket workers, giving me a $20 voucher doesn't make any difference if I've got a racist health worker."

When asked if it was fair to be labelling all Plunket workers as racists, Dr Jansen replied he is labelling the organisation as racist.

"We've got evidence that it still does this differential servicing of it clients, so that's problematic and I think we should be brave about it and say actually we can't stop Plunket being apt of our history, but it shouldn't be part of our future... there's no pale for it."

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