Good health in diversity

By CATHERINE MASTERS

If it had not been for migrants on hand at National Women's Hospital, new father Alan Charman reckons his wife would have had to give birth in the carpark.

When Rhonda Charman encountered a difficult labour with son Kaed, the Manurewa couple's hospital team included an English midwife, an Indian anaesthetist, an Indian paediatrician, a Middle Eastern obstetrician, an English physiotherapist, a Polynesian nurse and an Irish charge nurse.

And the cleaners that day were Polynesian.

A tongue-in-cheek Mr Charman told the Weekend Herald Winston Peters might be on to something with his talk of too many immigrants.

Think how much better off the country would be without them, he quipped.

Hospitals could stay within their budgets because they would have no staff to pay.

Auckland roads would be quieter because people would stay home when they were sick.

Infrastructure spending could be cut because of the reduction in population.

Then again, without them, his wife and baby could have ended up in serious trouble.

Mr Charman was grateful to all those who helped his family. One-week-old Kaed was thriving and 100 per cent perfect, he said.

"It just made me wonder, if we didn't accept migrants, where we would be now. We'd be out in the carpark with the midwife and the old bottle of smelling salts or whatever they used to have."

Winston Peters, the NZ First leader, said each of those jobs would once have been filled by a New Zealander who had no doubt gone overseas to get the wages they were due.

Mia Carroll, Auckland District Health Board's head of nursing and midwifery, said a "melting pot" of nationalities had helped enormously to fill vacancies in a time of international staff shortages.

"I would love the day when we have an overwhelming number of Kiwi staff, but the international nursing crisis is never going make that possible."

The ethnic mix also reflected Auckland's population.

"It adds to the flavour, the understanding and the diversity," she said. "The more diverse your table is, the better the quality of the decisions you make."

Said Mr Peters: "Excuse me, but that's hardly an explanation. So you bring in a whole lot of people from a whole lot of different backgrounds and you say it's good you've got people in hospital to handle them ...

"Let me tell you this: If I was running this country those jobs would be filled by New Zealanders getting proper wages and they wouldn't have to go overseas to Australia and the UK and everywhere else to get proper wages for it."

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