Kia ora tatou,
This is my first message to our community for the year. I hope you’ve had a great summer break.
My colleague Dr Vanessa Thornton has already thanked Counties Manukau staff for a fine effort over the New Year period. I’d like to further endorse this praise and add my personal thanks to you all.
I know we have some challenges ahead of us – recruitment and retention of staff remains a high priority for me and our Executive Leadership team but new staff are coming on board soon. We will welcome them to the important mahi they do.
We are starting the year well with a very pleasing intake of new young doctors. In fact, we currently have a TV documentary crew working in Middlemore, capturing the challenges of being a doctor in our highly-demanding hospital.
The new Minister of Health Dr Shane Reti visited us recently and he was particularly pleased with a new hi-tech security system now in place at Middlemore, giving extra reassurance of a safe environment in our wards and departments and campuses.
Dr Reti last week visited the Manukau SuperClinic where he made an announcement about an increase to the breast screening age for women aged 70 to 74.
It’s a bit early to tell how the changes the new government intends to make will affect us, but the Minister has talked about devolving some measures of control and decision-making back to the various health districts.
We’ll await with interest about further developments in this area.
I wish you a safe and rewarding year ahead.
Nga mihi
Andrew Connolly
Acting Chief Medical Officer
Counties Manukau