Elspeth McLean

The Southern Blood and Cancer Service which has improved access and reduced waiting times for patients in both Otago and Southland has achieved the impossible, Otago District Health Board chairman Richard Thomson says.

Concern at pressure to carry out elective surgery when Dunedin Hospital has acute cases waiting was expressed by Otago District Health Board chief medical officer Richard Bunton this week.

Limited services will be available at Wakari and Dunedin hospitals during the junior doctors' strike which begins tomorrow and, with Anzac Day this Friday, it could be next week before services are fully restored.

Controversy over pay rates for Otago and Southland senior doctors during today's strike abated yesterday afternoon when the union and the district health boards' chief executive, Brian Rousseau, reached agreement.

The evaluation of reductions made recently to non-acute mental health services offered by the Otago District Health Board is expected to take another two weeks, group manager of mental health and community services Elaine Chisnall says.

Doctors capable of working in intensive care in short-staffed New Zealand hospitals are being shut out because of tough registration requirements for such specialists, Dunedin Hospital's intensive care clinical leader, Mike Hunter, says.

Seventy-year-old former Dunedin physiotherapist Dr Stanley Paris is a man who likes a challenge.

The need to fill more than 130 vacancies at the Otago District Health Board may push spending on recruitment above $500,000 again this financial year.

British author Jill Mansell could have had a very different writing career - as a forger.

As the Otago District Health Board searches for ways to ease pressure on its under-staffed Dunedin Hospital, controversial plans to have a general practitioner centre at the emergency department may be revisited.

Reductions in non-acute mental health services offered by Otago District Health Board will start today, but some staff are unhappy with consultation over changes.

When the sun is shining, winter flu may seem far away, but this year's vaccination programme against the illness has begun.

It was hoped the Chinese gardens in Dunedin would open in late May, but bad weather could delay completion of some outside work, Chinese Gardens Trust secretary-treasurer Malcolm Wong says.