“We have a right to the best healthcare and the best health outcomes that are available. And we have a right to be part of creating the solutions when those rights aren’t being met. So advocacy needs to be part of an excellent health system.” — Professor Matire Harwood.
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“I’ve become a doctor in my 50s, which is all well and good, but I should have been a doctor 30 years ago. And the only reason I wasn’t was because of all these barriers that have been put in front of me.” — Dr Timoti Te Moke.
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“This isn’t policy-making — it’s political theatre, aping the aggressive strategy of a certain foreign leader to mask an ideological obsession with removing Indigenous and Te Tiriti-based rights in our country.” — Joshua Koko on Winston Peters’ Trumpish war on “woke DEI”.
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“I couldn’t, in all honesty, remain in my roles. The government didn’t seem interested in listening to genuine public health advice.” — Sir Collin Tukuitonga.
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“Academic prowess is one thing, but there’s a whole lot of things that we look for in our doctors and our medical people, and getting the mix right and choosing right is hard and complicated.” — Professor of surgery Jonathan Koea.
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“I’ve been mistaken for an orderly, a cleaner, and the girl who collects the food menus. I’ve even walked into rooms where patients tell me they’re waiting for the doctor because they assume that can’t be me.” — Dr Vanisi Prescott.
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“For Māori, the MAPAS agenda is grounded in our rights as tangata whenua. We have the right to become doctors in our own land, even in western medicine.” — Dr Elana Curtis.
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“I went to medical school to train to be a Māori doctor. Not a doctor, a Māori doctor.” — Dr Emma Espiner.
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“I knew that I’d got into med school with one of the lowest marks in the class, but I finished med school in the top 20 per cent, which I think goes to show that supporting Māori into med school is important.” — Dr Sue Crengle.
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“There were so few Māori or Pacific students. We felt we had the ‘future of the people’ on our shoulders. We stood out — and we were determined to do well.” — Dr David Tipene-Leach on being a medical student in the 1970s.
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“When a MAPAS student finishes work, they often drive home to a whānau where their knowledge of the health system is so badly needed. We’re pursuing equity not just at mahi, but in our whare, at our marae, and in our whānau circles.” — Chloe Fergusson-Tibble.
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“Before I got cancer, I wanted to be an All Black or a professional athlete.” — Dr Neru Leavasa, GP and MP for Takanini in Auckland.
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“As a GP in Māngere, I soon realised that medicine wasn’t the solution I was looking for. These people were coming in with problems that medicine, and my textbooks, couldn’t solve.” — Dr Canaan Aumua.
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“When I take the clamps off the vessels and see the shrivelled-up grey kidney become purple and then pink and then pulsate with blood, nothing else I do beats that.” — Dr Lupe Taumoepeau.
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