No Government plan to ban tangi during pandemic

The Government has no plan in place to impose a ban on tangi or other Maori gatherings in the event of a bird flu pandemic, Associate Health Minister Mita Ririnui said today.

He said the issue would be discussed with Maori communities, and the Government expected direction to come from those communities on how infection control measures would best work for them.

"There are no specific policies around this at the moment and, in spite of a recent report to the contrary, the Government has no plan in place to impose any ban on funerals or tangi," he said.

"The ministry is meeting soon with a Maori clinical group to identify what the key practices would be for Maori communities in the event of an influenza pandemic."

It was reported from Rotorua yesterday that plans to ban funerals and refrigerate bodies for up to six months during a bird flu pandemic had outraged Maori.

The plans, unveiled at a meeting at Rotorua Hospital, upset some kaumatua who said proposed bans on tangi and hongi had the potential to cause uproar among Maori.

Mr Ririnui did not specifically mention bird flu in his statement, but said because influenza was a respiratory disease spread in the droplets of coughs and sneezes, social distancing would be one of the measures that would form an important role in reducing the spread of infection.

"During the 1918 pandemic more than 2100 Maori died from the Spanish flu," he said.

"Reflected in today's population, significantly many more thousands of Maori could expect to perish. Anything we can do to mitigate that type of scenario must be discussed openly."

- NZPA