Elspeth McLean

Committee members for the new Southern District Health Board have been announced, subject to ratification at the next board meeting in June.

The Otago District Health Board's highest-polling candidate at the last election, Judith Medlicott, says she will not be standing for the new Southern board this year, but eight board members are still making up their minds.

A slight drop in the percentage of Otago patients receiving radiotherapy treatment for cancer within six weeks of their first specialist appointment has been due to the southern service carrying out work for other areas.

A delay in the introduction of the new Southern Primary Health Organisation has been reluctantly accepted by the Southern District Health Board, but it must not result in extra costs, Errol Millar says.

Having a ruptured appendix in the 1990s may have helped save Heath Te Au's life.

The new Southern District Health Board will have a more streamlined committee process than its predecessors.

Now we have left teenage and excessive drinking behind, most of us have to accept we are not invincible.

As the battle related to sleep-over payments is to enter its next round in court this week, the opposing parties are critical of the Ministry of Health's lack of involvement.

While Pharmac decision-making on high-cost, highly specialised medicines could be faster, no new fund should be set up for such drugs.