Maori traditional healers are being funded by the Ministry of Health at a cost of nearly $2 million a year.
see http://www.stuff.co.nz/thepress/4821162a6009.html
Rongoa is a traditional Maori system of healing that includes rakau rongoa (native herbal remedies), mirimiri (massage) and karakia (prayer), as well as spiritual support.
Image via Wikipedia“The mere fact that people use rongoa and go back to the practitioners is testament that the services they are given are contributing to their wellbeing.”
Healers were required to report to the ministry quarterly and submit an annual report, but the practitioners and their health outcomes were not reviewed. “It’s not unusual to fund on outputs. It’s extraordinarily difficult to report on outcomes,” Wall said.
Rakau rongoa herbal remedies were not covered by the Medicines Act and the ministry did not require them to be tested as part of its funding policy.
Mother Mary Joseph [Suzanne] Aubert (1835-1926) might have wondered whats going on here?
Famous for founding the Sisters of Compassion (a Wellington landmark and Institution) Mother Mary’s rongoa was a recipe of herbs and cannabis, a formulary adopted and sold, albeit fraudulently, when demand required Thomas Kempthorne to dilute it (later to become a famous New Zealand Pharmacueticals and Fertiliser partnership known as Kempthorne Prosser & Co, and one of my early computer clients before Ravensdowne Fertiliser purchased it and disposed of its ‘drug making’ assets. /Blair) .
Perhaps the Minister of Health (and notably a former Minister of Justice), Hon Tony Ryall should explain the present ‘difficulties’ given that Maori are substantially under the gun for herbal ‘cannabis’, most recently in Northland. see POLICE URGE PUBLIC: Dob in those dope growers
Blair Anderson
http://mildgreens.blogspot.com/
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