Mike Houlahan

Speaker Trevor Mallard has instituted a new policy in recent weeks, where each day one of his assistant Speakers reads the prayer which starts the proceedings of Parliament.

The Southern District Health Board, which mails about 1800 letters a day to patients, is considering ways to improve their content.

Southern cancer patients are dying and Health Minister Andrew Little needs to step in and save them, patient advocate Melissa Vining says.

One hundred jobs are to be maintained in Dunedin after the Government's endorsement of the revamp and expansion of the KiwiRail Hillside Workshops.

Southern radiation oncologists are despondent knowing their patients might have better outcomes if they had fallen sick with cancer elsewhere in New Zealand.

The hundred days target the Southern District Health Board set itself to address its issues with bed block is about to pass without them being solved.

Two years ago, after his first throat cancer diagnosis, Steve Carr had nothing but praise for his treatment through the Southern District Health Board.

The Southern Covid-19 vaccination rollout needs to be "put on steroids" to meet the Ministry of Health target of a fivefold increase in injections.

The first southern orthopaedic patient will be operated on in Timaru today and more will follow as the Southern District Health Board tackles high waiting lists for procedures such as knee...

Southern District Health Board chairman Pete Hodgson has challenged management to be ambitious and push to buy the board a new MRI scanner if one is needed.

Politically, David Clark and Michael Woodhouse do not have that much in common.

Parents of lazy teenagers now have the backing of Otago research to support them as they urge their idle adolescents to get up off the couch.

Lives were placed at risk by an inappropriate decision to start bowel cancer screening in the South, doctors say.

Many New Zealand parents continue physical disciplining of their children, a new study has found.

An inaccurate and alarmist flyer about the Covid-19 vaccine should not undermine the drive to protect New Zealanders from the pandemic disease, an Otago immunologist says.

The Southern region, the early pace-setter in the Covid-19 vaccination stakes, has come back to the pack but is still doing better than expected.

Appalling low rates of cancer scanning in the South are a continuing disappointment, the Cancer Society says.

Southern men, who have languished for years with inadequate access to a scanning machine to diagnose prostate cancer, should be prioritised by health system reforms, the Prostate Cancer Foundation...

More resources and a centralised workforce plan are urgently needed to ensure health services are delivered effectively to rural areas, new research says.