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Chris Lynch: How will mental health improve when reports are being censored?
8 Apr, 2021 06:00 PM
4 minutes to read
Health Minister Andrew Little. Photo / Paul Taylor
NZ Herald
The Ministry of Health is accused of being deceitful and I can understand why.
This week, it finally released data on its Covid-19 vaccination programme, but it took a bit of pressure to get there.
The announcement came on the same day the Herald reported that no vaccination progress numbers had been released, six weeks after the rollout began.
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It makes you wonder if the ministry was scrambling to look more transparent, after a weekend of negative press - which you may have missed given it was Easter.
Emails released to
Stuff under the Official Information Act showed a battle between officials at the Ministry of Health, some who wanted the report to be stripped back to its bare essentials, and others who argued it should keep consistent with what had been in previous reports. Half a year before the report was finally released Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield approved it to be published, but his deputy Robyn Shearer delayed it further and put a “risk lens” over it. Another official noted there was no legal requirement the report be produced and suggested shortening it, while a third noted the huge amount of “data and negative statistics” which she said was presented without enough context.
One official worried about the amount of negative statistics in the report.
A routine report on the Government’s mental health services was delayed for over a year as officials battled behind the scenes over plans to dramatically reduce the amount of data in it. The annual report, released more than two years late on Tuesday, still showed a very distressing picture of New Zealand’s mental health system - with a spike in the use of seclusion, a practice some liken to torture. But many indicators usually included in the report had been removed after a months-long and contentious editing process revealed in an Official Information Act request, including wait-times, suicide stats and the overall proportion of the population using specialised mental health services.