Free blood testing is being rolled out for nearly 24,000 people living in Wānaka and Te Anau - a move local health advocates are calling “a really big win” for rural healthcare access.

A spokesperson for Health Action Wānaka (HAW), which has been campaigning for publicly funded blood collection, said the group was thrilled the “clear inequity in healthcare delivery has been addressed.”

Health minister Simeon Brown said free blood testing would be in place from the start of November, giving more rural New Zealanders access to healthcare closer to home.

“The rollout means that 4,400 people in Te Anau and 19,350 people in Wānaka [Upper Clutha] can now access blood testing free of charge at their local GP,” he said. 

Until this point patients in both Wānaka and Te Anau have had to travel over an hour to reach a free collection centre or pay a co-payment at their local GP.

“While most New Zealanders have access to free blood tests, some rural communities in the South Island still have to pay because there are no local blood collection centres,” the health minister said.

Removing the cost barrier would help address a long-standing inequity between rural and urban areas, associate health minister Matt Doocey said.

“This initiative will lead to earlier and more timely diagnoses for people who have previously delayed testing due to travel or cost,” he said. “When I visited Wānaka as part of the Rural Health Roadshow, locals consistently raised concerns about having to pay for blood tests. 

He also singled out HAW for its advocacy for a local blood collection service.

“At our meetings with ministers Brown and Doocey in July, we presented three ‘quick wins’ that we wanted to see implemented,” the HAW spokesperson told the Wānaka App. “The delivery of a publicly funded blood collection service was one of those quick wins.”

“We proposed that Health New Zealand should fund the medical practices to deliver blood collection services rather than passing the cost on to the patient, and this is what has happened.”

The HAW spokesperson said it had asked the community what changes to healthcare delivery would make the most difference, and 71.2 percent of respondents indicated that free blood collection would significantly improve their access to healthcare. 

While the free blood testing is a “really good short-term solution”, HAW said in the long term it is advocating for “a walk-in blood collection in Wānaka, and longer phlebotomy hours so people don’t have to wait so long to get blood collected, and to ensure people can get appointments at the times, and on the days, they need them”.  

Waitaki MP Miles Anderson said the free blood testing was fantastic news for the people of the Upper Clutha. 

“Our local public health practitioners have been calling for this service, so it is great to see the government and Health NZ respond to the need in our growing community,” he said.

“Our Otago Central Lakes health planning group has been pushing towards outcomes like this, and I look forward to Health New Zealand completing their clinical services planning for our area so we can have an even broader view of potential public health solutions for southern communities.”

Across Wānaka’s three medical centres, around 20,000 blood tests are carried out each year.

PHOTO: Wānaka App