Alexander (Sandy) Milne

I am part-way composing a plea to our mayor and councillors re our frontline health services, but consider that it would be best if the Beacon ran it as an open letter on behalf of us all, especially less-well-off residents.

I ask our elected community leaders to read the excellent May 29 Beacon letter of Ross Morgan regarding the behind-the-scenes games corporate investors indulge in to make even more profits from patients in New Zealand.

This trading in the use of our bodies and biological specimens has been increasing below the radar for decades.

I have long hoped that family doctors would lead the charge in protecting patients who are in their care.

They are instead leading the over-charging, as recent Beacon letters have clearly illustrated.

If members of the long-silent Whakatāne Postgraduate Medical Society have plans for fixing this they should tell us right now.

Mayor Nandor Tanczos and councillors would do well to find out, in the interests of all residents, and report back via Beacon columns.

Ross Morgan suggested that concerned members of the public write to MPs, the Minister of Health and/or the Overseas Investment Office expressing their concerns about the commodification of basic healthcare. I suggest that readers would be wasting their time doing that: they should mobilise supporters and make this an Eastern Bay mission, as we are amongst the principal victims.

And we should all remember that this is election year.

I shall meantime try to focus on the microbiology services downgrade battle and have assembled enough material evidence to convince any sensible adult that we must act now or risk being stuck with this standard of service till the end of time.

I remind readers that it was doctors who encouraged the private-lab takeover of GP lab services in the Eastern Bay. It is true that several wiser local doctors realised the effect that would have on the Whakatāne Hospital lab, which until then served the whole community, but they were outnumbered by GPs who lacked the forethought.