Flu pandemic effect on Māori a lesson for Covid approach

Sunday, 17 October 2021

Top of the south Māori health leader Ditre Tamatea says there are lessons to be learned from the 1918 flu pandemic. (First published October 14, 2021)

Aotearoa has come a long way since Māori were turned away from health services during the influenza pandemic of 1918 – but a Māori health manager says we could still improve our approach.

During the worldwide sweep of influenza, up to 50 million people died from the virus and in New Zealand, the death rate of Māori compared to the rest of the population was grim.

The New Zealand History site reveals the Māori death rate was eight times higher than for Pākehā in 1918.

Nelson Marlborough Health general manager of Māori health and vulnerable populations Ditre Tamatea was brought up by his grandparents. Stories of the influenza pandemic from his kaumātua (great grandmother) to his kuia (grandmother) Anni Tukura have stuck with him.

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Nelson Marlborough Health general manager of Māori health and vulnerable populations Ditre Tamatea said his grandmother talk about Māori being turned away from access to Gisborne hospital during the influenza pandemic of 1918.

“She remembers cart loads of people being shifted by horses, dead bodies” that were moved to mass graves.

Many of his whānau and iwi on the east coast of the North Island belonged to Te Rongopai Marae in Waituhi, so people sick with the flu attempted travel to Gisborne city’s hospital.

Ditre Tamatea Nelson Marlborough Health general manager of Maori health and vulnerable populations.

Māori were met at the border by armed police who made them turn back because “the Pākehā population at that time didn’t want Māori coming in and putting pressure on the hospital system”.

“Māori … weren’t viewed as being equal in terms of their wellbeing relative to the rest of the population.”

He said the marae became their version of a hospital, “but they didn’t have the expertise to deal with the situation and many of them died”.

It was happening right across the country, Tamatea said.

“It was no different anywhere, Māori would be turned away.”

While such drastic actions were not happening now, Tamatea said “you kind of see a connection between that time and this time, in terms of the potential impact of Covid 19 on Māori relative to the rest of the population”.

The latest Ministry of Health statistics show that in terms of ethnicity, Māori have the highest number of unvaccinated people, followed by Pasifika, European or other, and lastly Asian.

Tamatea said the vaccine uptake among older Māori uptake was “really quite good” but as the roll-out reached younger Māori – who make up the majority of the Māori population – the numbers slipped.

He said among the contributing factors was younger Māori were easier to target with online anti-vaccination misinformation, they had a historic distrust of mainstream entities and greater hardship made it more difficult to access the Covid vaccine.

He said vaccination sites, drive-thru clinics, marae visits, and Māori health providers were “making the services easily accessible, but their next step needs to be taking the services to them in their homes”.

“If people turn that down, at least we know they’ve been given a real direct opportunity to protect themselves and their whānau.”