Simon Power: Public health services face challenges

Our public health service faces many challenges with an ageing population and more demand for doctors and nurses, while new technologies and services are constantly changing the treatments available to us.
National is working hard to meet these challenges and build a strong and enduring public health service.
Budget 2011 makes $2.2 billion of health funding available during the next four years. We're investing $68 million for more elective procedures to meet our goal of an extra 4000 each year.
These are necessary procedures such as hip replacements, grommets for children, and cataract removal.
We're also making sure our children get the best possible start to life.
We're providing an extra $54.5 million during four years to improve the safety and quality of maternity services, and to fund an extra 54,000 Plunket visits. Midwives, nurses and doctors will be able to give pregnant women, new mothers, and babies extra support.
The funding will also help establish regular local reviews of all births by local maternity health professionals, such as midwives, nurses and doctors, to identify improvements that help protect the safety of mothers and their babies.
We're also investing $20million for more medicines in 2011-2012, delivering on our promise to increase funding by $180million over the next three years. It's been estimated around 180,000 extra patients a year have benefited from better access to subsidised medicines because of this extra funding. Some of the new medicines to be subsidised include new cancer treatments, the first Alzheimer's disease drug and diabetes medicines. Medicines more people are getting access to include several for depression, auto-immune diseases, Crohn's disease, and cardiac and respiratory problems.
Last year's review of aged residential care services identified a pressing need to expand dementia services. Budget 2011 delivers $40 million during four years to look after people living with dementia. While many people with dementia can be cared for in their homes, there is a growing demand for residential dementia care around the country.
We expect the funding to deliver almost 200 extra residential dementia beds during the next two years.
We're investing a further $18 million for 40 medical school places and we're building on our promise to deliver 200 more places in the next five years.
In addition, disability support services will get an extra $130 million over four years to meet the rising demand and cost. We're directing $12million to help reduce rheumatic fever in vulnerable communities.
The Government is delivering better access to the frontline health services. We're meeting our commitment to a strong public health service.