Maternity facilities, especially fully stocked and staffed ones, cost money. Maternity funding is tied in with the health budget, and that is a pool of cash with numerous undeniably reasonable demands on it. Yet the truth is no government has managed to keep everyone happy in the health spending area, and none ever will. Maternity funding should not be stretched so thinly but, as long as it remains one of many competing needs within the health funding pool, it seems it always will be. Perhaps, then, it is time maternity funding be ring-fenced to ensure all New Zealand women have reasonable access to decent maternity facilities - including those in wide-reaching rural areas like ours.

Source: Otago Daily Times June 02, 2019 16:30 UTC