Eileen Goodwin

Wildly varying estimates of how many people undergo "medical tourism" makes it difficult to study, Dr Neil Lunt, of York University, told an audience in Dunedin this week.

A Rarotonga Hospital nurse's visit to Dunedin's Mercy Hospital may be the first of many exchanges between the two, Mercy Hospital anaesthetist Dr John Hyndman says.

Christchurch must not be used by the Government as a "scapegoat" to push asset sales and public sector cuts, Labour MP Lianne Dalziel told a public meeting in Dunedin yesterday.

Ninety-three elderly care residents displaced by Christchurch's February 22 earthquake will probably stay in the South long term, Southern District Health Board funding and finance general manager Robert Mackway-Jones says.

Having a "food conscience" helped secure a Dunedin school canteen a certificate of approval from the Heart Foundation.

Cooped up in a cage for a month as a protest, Carl Scott says he's still better off than battery hens.

Our "Stone Age genes" make people fat because food is available all day, every day, no matter the season, and we are programmed to eat it, Swedish obesity and health behaviour authority Emeritus Prof Stephan Rossner says.

On February 22, University of Otago tourism teaching fellow Dr Caroline Orchiston was in Melbourne to interview travel agents about the implications for tourism of last September's earthquake in Christchurch.

Maudie Wilson may not have liked the "fuss" accompanying her 108th birthday party yesterday but she had everyone there utterly charmed.

Ticket sales opened yesterday for April's iD Dunedin Fashion Week.

The Christchurch neurosurgeon who reportedly threatened to resign over the South Island neurosurgery service decision - which stipulated Dunedin would have resident neurosurgeons, against his recommendation - has been appointed the service's clinical leader.

Maudie Wilson, of Clyde, who turns 108 today, may or may not be New Zealand's oldest resident, but the family has no way of finding out, her daughter Fay Frazer says.

A family with a link to the Otago goldfields celebrated 150 years in New Zealand at the weekend.

Restricting access to the Long Beach Domain will give the community more control and stop "hoons" entering one of the few grassy areas left open at night in Dunedin, Cr Andrew Noone says.