A senior doctor's letter the Southern District Health Board tried for months to keep secret warns of a ''very real'' risk a patient will die because of a ''crisis'' in its Dunedin Hospital ear, nose, and throat department.
Health unions are expressing fears about a Ngai Tahu proposal to invest in Dunedin Hospital.
Auckland will get the lion's share of health finance jobs to be removed from Southern District Health Board under a cost-cutting proposal.
Patients may suffer if New Zealand's interests are not protected in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), senior academics and doctors warn in an open letter to Health Minister Tony Ryall.
People have become bored with economic inequality and poverty issues again after a surge of interest following the global financial crisis, University of Otago politics lecturer Dr Bryce Edwards says.
A stallholder drenched in a downpour at the Mosgiel Christmas market day yesterday was impressed when members of the public helped move her goods to safety.
Rain may have played a part in a slew of minor crashes in Dunedin at the weekend.
People who attempt suicide in their youth are more likely to develop physical as well as mental health problems later in life, new research from the Dunedin longitudinal study shows.
Confidential advice to Southern District Health Board members deciding whether to privatise the South's fertility service says strong competition from the private sector contributed to making an in-house service unviable.
Privatising the South's fertility service should mean shorter waiting times and new cutting-edge fertility procedures, the likely future provider says.
Dunedin home support workers who transferred from dumped home-care provider Presbyterian Support Otago (PSO) will continue to be paid a significantly higher mileage rate than other Access Homehealth workers, the Rural Women New Zealand-owned provider says.
The nurses' union says money was found to employ surplus graduate doctors, while hundreds of young nurses are missing out.
Timaru accountant Joe Butterfield (73) has been reappointed chairman of the Southern District Health Board for another term.
Dunedin City Council emergency management officer Glenn Mitchell, who will spend Christmas in the Philippines helping the typhoon-hit nation improve communication links.
Spending on communications, marketing and advertising has more than doubled at Southern District Health Board in the past three years, figures released under the Official Information Act show.
The story of a Scottish missionary who died in Auschwitz because she stayed in Hungary to help Jewish schoolchildren is being used in the fight against neo-Nazis in Europe, writer Lynley Smith says.
The Crown has asked to intervene in a landmark carer pay case because of its wide-reaching implications for public policy, a spokesman for Attorney-general Chris Finlayson confirmed yesterday.
All Southern District Health Board staff have been sent a report showing the organisation's progress in saving more than $15 million in health services.
Privatising the Otago Fertility Service (OFS) is a ''retrograde step'', the clinical director who fought to save the service says.
The medical workforce is becoming increasingly feminised, the Medical Council 2012 doctor workforce released yesterday shows.
