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Northern News : January 9th 2013
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6 NORTHERN NEWS, JANUARY 9, 2013 NEWS 5089257AA General Practitioners (GPs) and Hospital Medical Staff Share the Provision of After Hours Urgent and Emergency Medical Services in the Mid North at BOI Hospital (KERIKERI, KAIKOHE, MOEREWA, KAWAKAWA, PAIHIA AND RUSSELL) For free 24 hours health advice call Healthline 0800 611 116 During normal working hours you need to contact your usual family doctor or health care professional. FOR ALL LIFE THREATENING EMERGENCIES PHONE 111 FOR AMBULANCE Non life threatening conditions will be seen by an on- call GP in the after-hours clinic. There will be a charge for this (excluding children under the age of 6 years old who are NZ residents). For GP After Hours Urgent Service (BY APPOINTMENT ONLY) Phone your nearest GP Practice listed below and you will be put in touch with a registered Nurse Triage Service: BROADWAY HEALTH CENTRE (Kaikohe) 36 Lower Broadway Kaikohe Ph: 09-401 1556 BROADWAY HEALTH CENTRE (Waipapa) 5 Klinac Lane Waipapa 09 401 7172 BAYVIEW MEDICAL CENTRE Bayview Road Paihia Ph: 09-402 7132 PAIHIA MEDICAL CENTRE Selwyn Road Paihia Ph: 09-402 8407 MOEREWA MEDICAL SERVICES State Highway 1 Moerewa Ph: 09-404 0328 KAWAKAWA MEDICAL CENTRE 2 Vogel Street Kawakawa Ph: 09-404 0241 COMMERCIAL STREET SURGERY 8 Commercial Street Kawakawa Ph: 09-404 0885 KERIKERI MEDICAL CENTRE 4 Homestead Road Kerikeri Ph: 09-407 7777 KERIMED DOCTORS PARTNERSHIP 2 Ranui Avenue Kerikeri Ph: 09-407 0025 RUSSELL MEDICAL CENTRE Church Street Russell Ph: 09-403 7690 Health message on the move Another way: Annie Chapman decided to walk the North Island to raise awareness that there are alternatives to drugs when dealing with issues of mental health. Annie Chapman's journey started when she began working with people suffering from schizophrenia. She was in Kerikeri before the new year as she started a walk from Cape Reinga back to her home base near Wel- lington to raise support for those who want to deal with the disease without relying on drugs that carry with them -- at times -- debilitating side effects. Ms Chapman is a massage therapist and yoga teacher. She has dealt with depression through yoga herself. After beginning to work with people with schizo- phrenia and her caring'' for them, she began to feel, she says, more and more frus- trated and sad about their prospects -- seeing people who had been in the system for a lot of their lives and seeing what their lives had been like and seeing the young ones coming in and thinking this is what they're due for -- I just couldn't bear it. I kid you not, the guys that I work with might be taking a little mountain of pills four times a day.'' Ms Chapman says she has seen successful cases where people have been able to minimise the amount of drugs that they take to deal with the disease. And since she has started on her journey she says she is hear- ing from a lot of people, a lot of stories of people who often through deception have managed to get themselves out of the system''. On December 12, Ms Chap- man started at Cape Reinga -- ittookheraweektogetto Ahipara. Ms Chapman says she star- ted out with a naive perspec- tive in both her walk and in her appreciation of what schizophrenia was and how it is treated in New Zealand and throughout the world. She said her initial plan was as simple as putting her pack on at Cape Reinga and to start walking. I suspected that carrying the weight was going to be a challenge and it was a bigger challenge than I imagined.'' She started out with 17kg and has since jettisoned as much weight as possible. She is walking to raise awareness of what she calls an over-reliance'' on medi- cation. As if that's the only way to treat mental illness, when common sense and wisdom tells us that maybe medi- cation can be a small part of a large picture that's going to help a person reconnect with life in the best way.'' Ms Chapman says that if medication is in the centre of that picture, recovery is not generally what happens. She says she has had a lot of peri- pheral experience with people on anti-depressants but she was working as a support worker when she saw people who had been in the system for quite a long time, diag- nosed with schizophrenia. She calls the side effects of the anti-psychotics that she has seen -- astronomically bad''. People develop diabetes, heart disease, compacted bowel, have their immune system destroyed and become so sedated that they can't even begin to find a path back to living in the world again.'' She calls the drugs them- selves a life sentence. And says that it is no coincidence that so much funding for research comes from phar- maceutical companies. Any money that she raises from the walk will go to Hear- ing Voices, a group that looks to support those living with schizophrenia and to provide learning from it. I feel that a lot of it is com- mon sense and wisdom. A distressed person needs the maximum amount of sup- port to be reminded of their human-ness' their normality, rather than be reminded that they are this person with schizophrenia who needs a drug to deal with it.'' She says as she has observed people dealing with schizophrenia that the treat- ment seems almost back to front''. It begins with drugs, she says and then looks to sup- plement the treatment with other therapy. I'm not saying that nobody ever finds it helpful but given the side effects, surely the aim should always be to find the minimum therapeutic dose. And put all the other things in place.'' A multi-discipline ap- proach allows for a starting point for recovery, rather than a starting point that is an overly sedated place. Go to hikoiforhealth@ gmail.com to share stories with Ms Chapman. PRODUCT RECALL Warrior 2.6m Multi Fold Ladder & Warrior 3.1m Multi Fold Ladder SKU: 105671 and 372111 purchased after 22 November 2012 Please return this product to a Mitre 10 store for a FULL REFUND M10 7074NN The address of your nearest Mitre 10 store can be obtained by calling 0800 4 MITRE 10 or by visiting the website www.mitre10.co.nz and clicking on 'Store Locator'. New Kiwis created at event Twenty-eight Far North residents from seven countries became New Zealand- ers at a Far North Dis- trict Council citizen- ship ceremony conducted by mayor Wayne Brown in December. Those who declared they would honour the Queen, obey the laws of New Zealand and be good New Zealand citizens were: 15 people from the United Kingdom A family of four from Zimbabwe Three people with citizenship of the United Kingdom and the United States Two people from Ger- many One person from the United States One person from The Philippines One person from the Czech Republic One person with citi- zenship of the United Kingdom and The Netherlands.
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