By Tony Edmonds
At times, it is plain for all to see that we have no expert handbook to battle COVID.
This handbook needs to be written as the battle is fought.
But are we directing too much of our national health arsenal into this particular battle?
There are many other health dangers that need attention.
Are we draining our troops of doctors and nurses from those fronts to shore up the COVID defences?
Here are some examples from recent news media coverage to illustrate the point:
Interview with Andrew Little October 21:
Between 120 and 130 nurses have also been brought into Auckland from other parts of the country since the outbreak started in August.
What happens to patients in those regions from where the staff were transferred?
ICU bed capacity
We had 358 “Intensive Care Unit” (ICU)beds across the country in 2020, according to the Ministry of Health. What will happen to traffic, forestry, industry and other serious accident victims if COVID strikes large?
Radio NZ and NZ Herald. (Late September):
Many people with cancer are having to wait too long to be diagnosed due to Covid-19 restrictions, a top specialist warns.
Professor Frank Frizzelle, medical advisor for Bowel Cancer New Zealand, said after the nationwide lockdown last year, it took almost a year to clear the backlog of investigations and treatments.
“When the health system works at 97 or 98 per cent of capacity all the time, when you take a chunk of time out, there’s no capacity to catch up.
“And when you look at the figures put out by the national Cancer Control Agency, you can see the huge drop in the number of colonoscopies caused a real hiatus in diagnoses, and that led to delayed diagnoses.
“As we know that outcomes improve with earlier diagnosis, these delays are important and can lead to the need for more extensive (and expensive) treatment and worse outcomes.”
While everyone accepted the need for public health measures to curb the spread of Delta, there needed to be a “more nuanced response” outside Auckland, he said.
Professor Frizzelle said he was contacted by a patient from Southland, who probably had cancer but “can’t get anywhere near the hospital for weeks”.
NZ Herald article from Emma Russell, October 14
Headline:
Covid 19 coronavirus Delta outbreak: Missing women – 133 don’t know they have potentially deadly breast cancer.
More than 133 women could die of a breast cancer they don’t yet know they have unless the Government takes urgent action.
That is the harrowing warning from the Breast Cancer Foundation which today is rolling out a nationwide campaign to combat months of backlog putting a deadly strain on the screening programme.
“Quite literally Covid has set us back 10 years, which is tragic, absolutely tragic,” Breast Cancer Foundation chief executive Ah-Leen Rayner told the Herald.
People have been ringing up to book in a mammogram and being told to wait until next year, Rayner said.
More articles like this are not difficult to find.
To date in New Zealand, we have suffered 28 COVID deaths from an infection rate of almost 6000; Just under 6 deaths per 1000 cases. How will this compare with breast cancer, bowel cancer, heart attack and other conditions we traditionally analyse?
It’s a hard decision to make for any politician of health professional overseeing finite healthcare resources: who do I save? But a necessary decision, nevertheless.
