Eileen Goodwin

A Dunedin woman whose son provided her with meals during a stay in Dunedin Hospital is calling on the Health Minister to change his attitude.

The Southern District Health Board is ‘‘absolutely'' holding the Compass Group to account over the standard of Dunedin Hospital meals, but specific details and clauses in the 15-year contract with the multinational remain obscure.

Lowering the drinking age in the late 1990s "backfired'' by contributing to alcohol-related deaths, David Crerar says.

Dunedin research highlighting the plight of Otago's hip and knee patients was raised in Parliament yesterday.

Social service agencies in Dunedin are bracing for changes that a sector leader suggests some agencies will not survive.

More than 1200 patients, family members and staff have registered for the Southern District Health Board's "listening sessions'' that start in Dunedin tomorrow.

The chairman of the Clutha-Southland electorate has resigned in the wake of the "employment issue" in National MP Todd Barclay's Gore office.

The "employment issue'' in a National Party electorate office is understood to involve a claim a secret recording was made by Clutha-Southland MP Todd Barclay.

The Southern District Health Board has again drawn a line under its dispute with South Link Health and this time it appears the decision will not be re-visited.

The head of human resources at the Southern District Health Board left in a ‘‘huge rush'' and now the department is undergoing major change without input from unions, an organiser says.

Health Minister Jonathan Coleman tried to draw a line under the Dunedin Hospital food controversy by sampling the meals at a hastily arranged luncheon yesterday.

Hearing their 2-year-old recite the alphabet backwards helped parents Mel Stevenson and Alex Gilks realise something was different about their son.

Health Minister Jonathan Coleman has bowed to pressure to taste test controversial new meals at Dunedin Hospital, but without media present.

A secret proposal to fund the Dunedin Hospital rebuild through a controversial public-private partnership that would deliver the city its long-awaited five-star hotel can be revealed.

The "explicit rationing'' of joint-replacement surgery in Otago is worsening, and patients should look to other ways of funding their surgery, a research paper published today in the New Zealand Medical Journal says.

Housing New Zealand is spending millions of dollars cleaning up traces of methamphetamine that a poisons expert says pose ‘‘minimal risks of toxicity'' unless the house was used to manufacture the drug.

The group overseeing the delay-plagued Dunedin Hospital rebuild has run up more than $21,400 in fees and expenses for a combined total of 18 days' work.