Farmers' well-being centre stage

Waikato DHB's critical care unit will be demonstrating CPR with a highly lifelike mannequin. Photo / Supplied

Demonstrations including giant walk-in bowels and drunk goggles aimed at improving health awareness.

Walk inside a giant inflatable bowel, understand the effects of being on drugs or drunk without the hangover, get a free dental check, witness a mock colonoscopy and sign up for an online doctor service - all this while visiting Fieldays this year.

The Health Hub is returning to Fieldays and is aimed at providing people with interactive experiences and advice around all aspects of health.

NZ National Fieldays head of events Lee Pickering said the aim of the hub was to bring health professionals to farmers who did not always have the opportunity to leave the farm for health checks.

Mobile Health chief executive Mark Eager said although it seemed like an odd thing to have at Fieldays, it had facilitated frank conversations with farmers when they were last there six years ago.

Eager said the cost of having a stand had prohibited it from exhibiting again for several years, but inspired by last year's Education Hub they had decided to participate.

The mobile surgical bus usually travelled on a five-week loop from Kaikohe to Gore performing between 8 to 15 operations a day where there were no operating theatres in rural hospitals. This year it had detoured to Mystery Creek.

Mock operations would be carried out over the four days and surgeons would pretend to operate on students acting as patients. Visitors would have the chance to see a cut being sutured up on pig skin pretending to be a stomach, a colonoscopy being carried out on a fake bottom and a knee arthroscopy on an artificial knee.

"I would like to think that we are making a difference and getting rural people to think about their health. Rural people find it difficult to access health so they present late and when they are quite sick when in fact they need to get the earlier stages of their symptoms so whether it is depression, melanoma or a bowel issue or it is kids' teeth ... rotting. The earlier we get it - the better the chance people have got of making a difference with these things," Eager said.

The Waikato DHB has 11 different exhibitors onsite at the Mystery Creek Event Centre ranging from the critical care unit who will be demonstrating CPR using a life-like mannequin that cries, talks and moans, to new alcohol and drug service Youth Intact.

It also will have "fatal goggles" for people to try. The goggles make people feel drunk or drugged and wearers will be asked to carry out some simple tasks.

Waikato DHB chief executive Nigel Murray said Fieldays was an invaluable way of reaching thousands of people in a really fun and interactive way about healthcare services.

Murray said he was aware of challenges facing rural patients and was wanting to improve access to healthcare via its SmartHealth online doctor service and through its proposal for a medical school in the Waikato which would address the shortage of rural doctors.

There would also be free dental checks for children, a test where people had to find a lump on a model of a breast, advice about making homes healthier and warmer, an inflatable walk-through bowel to highlight bowel cancer and yoga for farmers.