WELLINGTON, April 2 (Xinhua) -- The New Zealand government is delivering on its commitment to support general practice (GP) doctors and nurses, and pharmacies on the frontline of the fight against COVID-19.
"For us to overcome COVID-19, we need community health services such as general practice and community pharmacy to step up and to work in new ways and they must be supported," Health Minister David Clark said on Thursday.
"The public relies on their services and we need to do as much as possible to protect and sustain these critical workforces. They're a truly essential part of frontline health care delivery, particularly now we're at Alert Level 4," Clark said in a statement.
The government has put in place an initial 30-million-New Zealand-dollar (17.8-million-U.S.-dollar) funding plan for these sectors, which is part of the 500-million-New Zealand-dollar (298-million-U.S.-dollar) COVID-19 health package announced last month. This money began flowing to GPs and pharmacies this week.
"We heard sector concerns that they needed support to work differently and sustainably at this very testing time. This support package goes some way towards the immediate needs, but we know there'll be more to be done," Clark said.
Under this package, financial support has been developed to provide early support to general practice and community pharmacy. The initial payments are to recognize additional workload, and how work is changing under COVID-19, he added.
Director-General of Health, Ashley Bloomfield from the Ministry of Health said there is plenty of personal protective equipment (PPE) available in New Zealand, more is on the way.
