If we’re going to critically review NZ’s response, we need to ask why, in the almost prophetic words of David Skegg (5 Feb 2020)

“New Zealand is one of the few high-income countries in the OECD without a discrete national public health agency.”
/1
https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/pubhealthexpert/2020/02/05/a-preventable-measles-epidemic-lessons-for-reforming-public-health-in-nz/ https://twitter.com/coughlthom/status/1252681676204863489

Post measles outbreak, Skegg wrote:

“Since [1995] public health capacity at the national level has followed a downward trajectory reaching a low point under the previous DG Health (2013-17) by which time there was not even an identified public health group in the MoH.” /2

Skegg detailed all of this in his book The Health of the People 2019 @BWB_NZ but named key politicians who had been instrumental fragmentation process /3

https://twitter.com/drjinrussell/status/1252180089564835841?s=21 https://twitter.com/drjinrussell/status/1252180089564835841

Skegg noted in Feb that “. A recent global assessment found NZ scored relatively poorly in terms of its capacity to manage pandemic threats (and far behind Australia)”

Have we done well in spite of our limited capacity? Have JA and AB and the MOH made up for these deficits? /4

Skegg’s prophetic instinct and historical learnings are so prescient that my sense is we need to do exactly what he proposes - establish Public Health Aotearoa, a National public health agency to lead. Not just for pandemics, but all other less urgent but just as important probs.