Kaumatua scheme keeps elderly in touch with health

A trust providing popular marae-based day clinics has more clients than money, reports STACEY BODGER

ROTORUA - Elderly Maori women sit in a circle of chairs and, hands on hips, move their torsos to music.

Mariana Emery, aged 82, bops up and down to the tune, laughing and clapping her hands in delight.

"This is our aerobics - but we're not allowed to do it standing up because we'd get too excited and might fall over," she giggles.

Mariana Emery travels for 40 minutes, twice a week, from her home at Maketu to the Houmai Tawhiti Marae near Okere Falls, 20km northeast of Rotorua.

She is one of more than 300 Maori who attend marae-based Te Tatau Pounamu health services known as kaumatua early intervention programmes.

Te Potiri Trust, the umbrella group of a number of Bay of Plenty Maori health organisations, has run twice-weekly day clinics at 14 marae around the region since 1996, in conjunction with Midland Health.

The clinics were established after the trust discovered that many kaumatua were not receiving regular health checks. An iwi-based programme incorporating cultural recognition has proved to be more encouraging.

As well as health checks by a nurse or doctor, both male and female kaumatua are given access to services including blood pressure, heart and diabetes checks, breast cancer screening and cervical smears.

They get a meal, participate in movement classes to improve strength and mobility, and queue with excitement for mirimiri - natural treatment such as massage.

On average, 30 people with serious health problems are detected each month.

The trust receives about $40,000 a year from the Health Funding Authority for each day programme - an amount based on 10 people per clinic.

But the service is proving so popular that up to 50 people are turning up to most clinics.

The trust also fears that the authority plans to pull the kaumatua programmes back under mainstream criteria - meaning they may be cut or lose funding.

Mariana Emery said there would be an uproar among those who attended the clinics. "We've seen people throw away their walking sticks after coming here. It's money well spent."

To Te Potiri Trust Board member Rubyanne Merito, trying to integrate the clinics into mainstream services would be like "trying to jam a circle into a square."

After negotiations this week between the trust and the authority, Rubyanne Merito understood the funding would be rolled over for another year, during which the service would be evaluated.

But she said that until the trust received a written commitment, it still feared that Maori risked going back to the days of falling through cracks in the health system. "For most kaumatua, coming to these days is as beneficial socially as it is medically. For some it's the highlight of their week and they will lose greatly if the service disappears," she said.

Trust board chairman Arapeta Tahana said the success of the clinics had surpassed expectations.

"The alternative is that they sit in their homes and see their GP when they can afford it."

Gwen Tepania-Palmer, the authority's Maori health group manager, said she could not comment on the matter while contract negotiations were taking place.