16 May 2013

Funding for treatment not prevention under National

Health Minister Tony Ryall today cut funding from services that can help prevent obesity but boosted funding to treat diabetes and heart disease, Green Party health spokesperson Kevin Hague said today.

Today Health Minister Tony Ryall announced $9m a year to help people with obesity-related diseases but failed to adequately fund public health or primary health services enough to keep up with population changes.

“Tony Ryall is sticking band aids on problems caused by the obesity epidemic while stripping funds from the services that work on prevention,” Mr Hague said.

“The Health Minister has his head in the sand over obesity because he is ideologically opposed to measures that would help.

“Primary and public health services need to be better funded to do more work on obesity prevention.”

Far from tackling the problem of obesity, the National Government has canned Ministry of Health funds for Healthy Eating Healthy Action (HEHA) programmes, dumped guidelines that ensured only healthy options were sold at schools and won’t invest in obesity prevention.

“New Zealand’s health bill is just going to grow under this National Government which buries its head in the sand about the causes of problems and only tries to sweep up the pieces.

“A Government the Green Party is part of will tackle the health issues at their core,” Mr Hague said.

ENDS

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