He kōrero nā ngā tauira , Caroline Blucher
How can the pharmacy profession contribute to reducing Māori health disparities?
There can be no easy way to change health disparities within health professions. But the pharmacy profession can absolutely help to recognise where and why there are these disparities before actually tackling the major problem. Therefore we have to begin in the two universities where students can gain the Bachelor of Pharmacy over a four year degree. This is at both the University of Auckland and the University of Otago. Here there are already disparities. I am an Auckland University student in the Māori and Pacific Islander Scheme (MAPAS), which helps Māori, in particular, to gain the tools in succeeding, which is great. But the paradox is fewer than 10 people are in this scheme for pharmacy and I am not talking about in my year only. Instead I am talking about over the whole four year degree! One hundred people are allowed into pharmacy each year, meaning less than two percent of pharmacy students are Māori. How can we decrease disparities if there are next to no Māori in pharmacy?
This is not the only problem. There are hardly any 'New Zealanders' in the course yet no international students are allowed. Yes, they all are New Zealand citizens but even they do not consider themselves New Zealanders. These people want the New Zealand experience, they do not want the culture and can not relate to our ancestry. These people can not be expected to treat Māori when many have not maybe even interacted with one, instead these people are being taught on television about the harsher side of New Zealand; which all countries have. When lecturers are teaching their students that Māori are more deprived, have more risk factors and die earlier, what are the non-New Zealand cultures supposed to think, especially when respected Māori lecturers come in to teach the opposing theories and many of the students (non-New Zealanders) get up and leave as soon as they see them. They are just not interested in learning New Zealand culture.
When talking to the head of pharmacy I learnt another problem. Ninety percent of people who get into the pharmacy degree are from Auckland, myself being in the minority of the only 10 percent of people from other mostly rural towns within New Zealand. This raises a major problem! When most of the problems of health are in the rural areas how are we able to change this when only 10 of the 100 people come from places other than Auckland.
There needs to be actions made so students are taught the life skills to treat everyone equally uniquely to their own situation and are made to learn the Māori culture in secondary school. I was taught Māori up to Year 10 as it was compulsory and it has helped me significantly today to learn about my own culture. Yes, Māori do have unequal health risk factors but it is not the individual's fault in most cases. Building pharmacies is not enough if the people who run them can not interact and empathise with cultures other than their own. If this changed then maybe there would be fewer disparities to begin with because there will always be disparities, it is how we deal with them that determines the extent.
