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Latest Covid-19 outbreak reinforces importance of Māori, Pacific health professionals - Bloomfield

The Director of Health was asked about the proposal to cap Māori Entry Pathway admissions at Otago University.

The latest community Covid-19 outbreak has shown the importance of Māori and Pacific health professionals, Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said today as Otago University comes under fire over a proposal to cap Māori Entry Pathway admissions.

RNZ reported a discussion document was presented last month to the Medical Admissions Committee that included a possible cap of 56 Māori and 20 Pacific students through the pathway. 

When asked about the pathway today, Bloomfield reflected on a similar scheme in place at Auckland Medical School when he was a student in the 1980s. 

"It recognised the need to support and pro-actively ensure that Māori and Pacific students were not only admitted to medical school but supported through to qualify at the other end.

"There is no doubt that these groups are under represented in our medical workforce around the country. 

"That scheme in Otago also includes a rural scheme as well, recognising there is a need to ensure that students from outside of the main centres are able to both get into medical school and then are supported to go through."

He said people from Māori, Pacific and rural communities were more likely to go and work out in those communities "and provide the sort of care that works for those communities". 

"There's no better example of this than over the last four weeks in Auckland," Bloomfield said.

"The importance of the Māori and Pacific health professionals and providers in engaging with these communities who have Covid-19 - and how successfully they have been able to not only meet their needs but to identify the contacts, both close and casual - to help contain the outbreak.

"It just reinforces the importance of making sure that we are providing services across the health system that include both kaupapa Māori and Pacifica services."

Bloomfield said it was "striking" and a "key lesson" from the latest outbreak. 

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern compared diversity in the medical profession to diversity in Parliament. 

"We have a duty to represent the communities that we are here to serve," she said. 

"There are a number, historically, of groups that have been poorly represented in this place, and in order to overcome that it will often take proactive policies and changes in the way we do things to improve that representation.

"I think there are many examples where that is the right thing to do."

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