Health & Wellbeing

Southland patients have a new diagnostic scanner — and it does more than one job. Southland Hospital's radiology department has installed a GE Aurora SPECT-CT scanner, combining nuclear medicine and CT imaging technology in a single machine. It's already in use. Health New Zealand general manager of

Two SIT staff spent a week in Poland this month building international partnerships — and came back with genuine interest in Southland as a study destination. SIT nurse educator Marie Meyer and head of faculty Hamish Small travelled to Gdańsk from May 20 to 24 to attend the Powiślańska Academy of

The defibrillator at Five Rivers Café had been sitting dormant — battery flat, pads expired, locked inside a building that closes at night. It's back now, and anyone can reach it. New café owner Emily Todd discovered earlier this year that an AED had previously been donated to the

Certain areas of Invercargill such as bus stops, carparks and on the footpaths outside education facilities could all soon be smoke and vape free. The Invercargill City Council is reviewing its Smokefree policy and although the current one includes vaping as well, the wording will change to make it clearer.

A coroner has found Corrections staff skipped a mandatory risk assessment before an Invercargill Prison inmate took his own life — and that a history of similar failures dates back nearly a decade. Nukuroa "Nuku" Strange, 30, died in his cell on August 4, 2022. He had attempted suicide

More than 30,000 New Zealanders with type 2 diabetes will get easier access to four blood sugar medicines from September 1, after Pharmac widened its funding criteria. The medicines — empagliflozin, empagliflozin with metformin, liraglutide and dulaglutide — will now be funded for anyone with type 2 diabetes whose blood sugar

Hawthorndale Care Village has appointed a clinical leader with more than two decades of aged care experience to its board, as the Invercargill facility moves into what it describes as its next stage of development. Jill Smith joins as a trustee, bringing a background spanning aged residential care, hospice, community

A Winton man with kidney cancer waited nearly seven months for surgery after his operation was cancelled without explanation — and nobody at Southland Hospital told him why. David Evans undergoes surgery every three to four months to cut away the cancer. His January procedure at Southland Hospital went ahead. The