Today on Mata: The National Party's health spokesperson Dr Shane Reti explains why he’ll shut down the Māori Health Authority if National is elected government. Mihingarangi Forbes also speaks to panelists, AUT Dean of Law, Khylee Quince and Te Pāti Māori candidate, Takutai Tarsh Kemp.
Subconscious bias in healthcare is a large reason for the inequities between Māori and non-Māori, National Party health spokesperson Shane Reti says.
If the National Party were to win the election, Reti would disestablish Te Aka Whai Ora - Māori Health Authority and instead "ramp up" cultural competency training for the sector.
"Nothing I've seen in the past year has convinced me otherwise," he told Mata.
"There may be some improvements, all the improvements I'm seeing are in structure, not actually in function and actually, what Māori need are in functional outcomes."
He again called for the minister to release the independent review into the authority.
"This needs to be a balanced assessment of the review but I'm hearing it just shows challenges."
Asked if there were any areas in health where there was no inequity between Māori and non-Māori Reti said in "almost any area" of health you pointed to, "Māori do worse" than non-Māori.
"I think a large part of those inequities are actually grounded in subconscious bias and for me, the way to address that subconscious bias is actually through cultural competency, both through medical and nursing school training, at an organisational level, at a college level..."
Māori health providers also need to be empowered so care could be delivered "close to the home and close to the hapū", Reti said.
Asked how he would roll out cultural competency so it reaches everywhere, if he was to become the inister of health, Reti said he would make it a general policy statement .
"[It] would be very clear indication to the medical council that the annual practicing certificates would need to take into account cultural competency, send a very clear signal to all of the colleges that I have an expectation that there would be cultural competency training and a very clear signal to the medical and nursing school and allied health training organisations that I have an expectation of them to also be improving what they're delivering in the way of cultural competency".
Cultural competency was already being done, Reti said, but he wanted to "ramp it up".
Reti was asked how he would reduce the figure of Māori women being 68 percent more likely to die of breast cancer than Pākehā women.
National would increase free breast cancer screening from 70 to 74 years of age - "that would save roughly 68 lives, New Zealand women lives, every year".
It was a priority for him, he said.
Reti said he wanted to see a trend change in both cancer and immunisation figures.
He did not want to put a number on this, he said.
