New health group

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 6, Issue 298, 4 August 1989, Page 2

New health group

A new Waimarino Health Watch Committee has been formed, though it is made up of much the same people as the previous one.

Outgoing chairman Jenny Dekker said the group was disappointed at the poor turnout at the meeting to elect new members, especially from Ohakune people and from the Maori community, especially considering the health concerns of Maori people. Only three Ohakune people attended the meeting and all were health professionals, she said. The new committee is

Rowena Kui, Carole Harford, Helen Pocknall, Kate Lowrie, Dorothy McNie, Dorothy Scarrow, Peter Gardener, Jenny Dekker, Eve Rush, Michelle Haugh, Maureen Stark, and Ces and Lola Goodwin. The new chairman and secretary will be chosen at the next meeting. Out-going chairman Jenny Dekker addressed the meeting on what the health watch committee has done in its first three years. She said one of the main functions of the group is health promotion, another is to be a "watchdog" for the Wanganui Area Health Board. Major projects undertaken in the first three years were a survey of the elderly and their health needs, setting up the Standby group

which is a home help service, working to find a doctor for Raetihi, offering a food handling and hygiene course, participating in the national Aids Awareness week. The group has run cervical smear clinics, supported the board's Drink Drive Die campaign, made submissions to the board on its strategic pl .n and wrote a series of articles on baby and child care for publication in the Ruapehu Bulletin. They helped co-ordi-nate the Hepr.titis B vaccination programme and helped organise such groups as Health of the Elderly Service Development Group. Numerous speakers have been invited and heard by the group on various health matters. The last main event for the group has been the Health Expo, run in March this year which drew interest from a wide range of people. The group has not had to undertake fundraising as the Board sets a budget for each Community Health Watch Committee, which the Waimarino group has worked within. Jenny Dekker summed up by saying the core group of the committee had always worked well despite poor attendance at some meetings and said how she personally found the work innovating and challenging and the concept of the health watch committees exciting and stimulating. She said those that get involved in the future would not be disappointed at the experience.