Tony Ryall

Health Minister Tony Ryall made a ''huge song and dance'' in the last Budget about improving cancer care, but fewer than half of the new cancer nurse co-ordinators have been recruited nearly a year after they were announced, Labour health spokeswoman Annette King says.

Health Minister Tony Ryall surprised Dunedin Hospital emergency department staff with an impromptu visit yesterday.

The health of patients who take part in treatment trials may be put in danger by Government changes to ethics committees, a group of academics says.

People who may have forgotten they gave consent for their newborn baby's blood spots to be used in research after screening for metabolic disorders will not be contacted to see if they are still happy with that decision.

Concerns have been raised in an independent report, and by experts and providers, about the sustainability of a national breast-screening service. Elspeth McLean reports.

National is promising free after-hours medical care for children aged under six.

Far from being a deliberate ploy, the five-month delay in releasing correspondence from Canterbury neurosurgeons sought by the Otago Daily Times last December was an oversight, deputy director of the National Health Board Michael Hundleby says.

Health Minister Tony Ryall has welcomed the National Health Board's assessment of Dunedin Hospital systems announced this week.

Concern that Health Minister Tony Ryall is creating a climate of fear in the health sector has been raised by Green Party health spokesman and former district health board chief executive, Kevin Hague.

District health boards' autonomy is quietly reducing and could reach the point where board members are little more than "mini monitors of performance", retiring Southern District Health Board chairman Errol Millar says.