Kaitaia Hospital received $10 million for upgrading its maternity and community mental health facilities. Photo / File
Kaitaia Hospital received $10 million for upgrading its maternity and community mental health facilities. Photo / File
A Far North community midwife hopes the $10m allocated to Kaitaia Hospital will bring relief for her and her colleagues as maternity services are financially strapped in the district.
Northland DHB has received $10m as part of a new funding package announced by the government on Wednesday to upgrade Kaitaia Hospital, including its maternity and community mental health facilities.
Kaitaia midwife of 19 years Kerri Rewha said maternity care in the Far North needed money for recruiting, upgrading equipment, extending facilities and social services connecting to the maternity ward.
"We have four LMCs (Lead Maternity Carer) plus the midwives employed by the DHB to cover the area between North Hokianga to the Cape," Rewha said.
"We need a social unit attached to us, too. We have no social worker for our mothers, and the ones who are working up here are way too busy for maternity care."
She said midwives would spend much of their time navigating women in need of social support which goes beyond the normal workload of a midwife.
Another issue was waiting times for hospital transfers, Rewha explained. Women in labour would sometimes have to wait up to three hours for the ambulance to take them to the hospital.
"The hospital doesn't have enough drivers. They have to send people up from Whangārei, Kawakawa or Kerikeri. If I know it's going to be too much trouble, I take them in my own truck and drive them to the hospital."
According to Rewha the current wait for a maternity scan is eight weeks so a lot of women have to drive to Whangārei for an appointment which can become a financial issue for some.
For the hospital's maternity ward, Rewha would like to see an extra whānau room allocated where mothers can meet and families visit.
Part of the $10m will go towards building repairs after a survey in 2019 found that the hospital's roof needed urgent repair to remedy weather-tightness issues, while some money will finance upgrades of "the maternity ward, main hospital block and community mental health," Meng Cheong, Northland DHB's general manager for finance, funding and commercial services, said.
Cheong said the DHB was very pleased to receive $10m of Crown funding for remediation work at Kaitaia Hospital.
The older parts of the hospital were built in the mid-1960s, so its failures appear to be due to age and condition rather than the systemic weather-tightness issues found in buildings built in the 1990s and 2000s.
The newer part of the building at the southern end, including the main entrance, was completed in 2005 but this seems to be less affected than the older parts of the building.
Health Minister Dr David Clark said on Wednesday that the funding announcement was a real progress in rebuilding and strengthening hospitals and public health services.
"We've invested more into upgrading our hospitals in our first two budgets than the previous Government managed in nine years. But we know there is more work to do."
Clark said the $10m for Kaitaia Hospital would make a considerable difference to communities in the Far North.
"This investment will support Northland DHB to continue to deliver high quality services and better health outcomes for people in the Far North, both now and into the future."
The funding was from the Government's New Zealand Upgrade Programme announced in the $12 billion infrastructure package on Wednesday.
The package pumped more than $800M into Northland, including $692M on four-laning State Highway One from Whangārei to Port Marsden Highway and upgrades to 100 schools.
