Relax Hokianga

03/10/2025

22/09/2025

In 2025, women are still being treated using antuquated practices with dark ages thinking.

It really is about time that stopped!

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1SnG6y2UaX/

Since the 1800s, the instruments used in gynecology have gone largely unchanged, and so has the pain many women endure. But a reckoning is finally underway in medicine, driven by a new wave of scientific innovation and patient advocacy. Changes in everything from medical guidelines to instrument design promise a less painful future for women’s health care: https://on.natgeo.com/48q4nhw

17/09/2025

17/09/2025

Great to see an international interest in patient care;

Such a shame we're still waiting for that to be true of our own health bodies in New Zealand.

Today is World Patient Safety Day.

Properly investing in meaningful patient safety initiatives saves lives! Countries that prioritise patient safety see up to 30% fewer medical errors and save billions in healthcare costs.

The HCAA, together with health agencies, individuals, professional associations, consumer groups, and advocacy groups across New Zealand who endorsed the Mandaluyong Patient Safety Declaration in a letter to Minister Simeon Brown, have taken a stand.

This was a united call: we need a firm commitment to improving patient safety in Aotearoa New Zealand. NZ must fully invest in our health sector, in patient safety, and in preventing avoidable harm.

NZ has now formally adopted the WHO Mandaluyong Patient Safety Declaration, this may not be a binding piece of legislation, but it does provide at least some form of accountability. Even if it isn’t binding, it creates an ongoing reference point for what patient safety should mean, and what we expect to see delivered.

Patient Safety is an undeniable, non-negotiable human right.

Safe care is good care!

12/09/2025

Happy Anniversary to all those women with Essure who still don’t know their should have been monitored for the last 8 years.

20/08/2025

My Essure Journey

How many women are living with this time-bomb unaware of the dangers they may face?

11/08/2025

Maybe AI could write a recall for Women with Essure. Its really not that hard Health New Zealand - Te Whatu Ora
I managed it in a few minutes.
Why after 8 years are we still waiting?

21/07/2025

Gynaecology nightmare
Our Health ministry and Parliament are complicit in allowing preventable harm of women to continue unnecessarily.

Unlike most contraceptive devices, Essure can't "just be pulled out".
Removal usually means the loss of a woman's uterus.

Now tell me why, despite Medsafe requesting monitoring, no one is telling women with Essure that their health was to be monitored, from 2017! Simeon Brown MP

A quick search of the word Essure on parliaments website clearly shows no one has done their job, and the chain is just being dragged all over our concerns.

I’ll make it easy for you Simeon, here is Medsafes paltry response to my petition submission.

https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/sc/submissions-and-advice/document/54SCPETI_EVI_eb89a419-b2ba-440b-e2ae-08dc2e0029f8_PETI1423/medsafe-petition-of-catrina-mcgregor

And this from HealthNZ in response to an OIA by the Associate Health Minister in reaction to the petition. Note, this was requested BEFORE the petition even closed.

https://www.health.govt.nz/information-releases/essure-recall-notice

And this from Medsafe in 2017.

https://medsafe.govt.nz/hot/Recalls/RecallDetail.asp?ID=21840

Please do tell us when the monitoring of our health due to this device is actually going to happen.

Did you know New Zealand National Party Christopher Luxon Winston Peters New Zealand First David Seymour that some women in New Zealand do not even have the device listed in their medical records, despite being told this is what they were given, when they were expecting a tubal ligation.

Why is New Zealand Parliament Health New Zealand - Te Whatu Ora dragging their feet 7 years and 10 months after the device was recalled and Medsafe requested monitoring of recipients?

When are women in NZ who “had their tubes done” between 2003-2017, gong to be told they may have unknowingly received this device?

When are the women who knowingly received it, going to be told they require monitoring?

How many women in NZ are suffering catastrophic health decline due to this device and when are they going to be taken seriously?

When are doctors, that you all tell us to take our concerns to, going to be provided with vital information pertinent to the diagnosis and treatment of Essure injuries?

Why has it taken over 7 years for anyone to do their job?

How much longer do we have to wait? Another 7 years?

Because I can assure you, if a rusty metal spring was inserted in your male reproductive organ, we would have heard about this well before now. There would be a national outcry from men with their hurty bits, but because we’re women, no one cares?

Is that the model for health in this country?

Be a man, or be ignored

ACT
Casey Costello MP
Scott Simpson MP
Nicola Grigg MP
Carmel Sepuloni MP
Manatū Wāhine, Ministry for Women, New Zealand

20/07/2025

Lack of publicity around Essure means many gynaecologists have no clue what they're dealing with or how to help women affected by the device.

How much longer are device manufacturers going be allowed to get away with harming women?

12/06/2025

"Once fitted with Essure at 30 years old, Marion bled incessantly for 17 years. I think of Alina Azzollini, who described to me the thick fog that accompanied the whirl of her day-to-day life for five, long years, her wooziness the result of excessive blood loss. And of Serena, who – while seated across from me in her Wodonga home – evoked the rich, warm tinge of her bathroom tiles sullied in her own blood, before dull sirens indicated an ambulance had arrived. She was wheeled out of her home by two paramedics as her children watched on in horror. I think of Amber Miliano, whose doctor – after hearing about how she’d regularly bleed after s*x – insisted she wasn’t aroused enough. And Veronica Miller, who – in April 2023, on the first day of the Essure hearing – was unable to tune in as she was receiving an emergency blood transfusion at the time. She had passed out the night prior, sliding limply off the toilet. In her daze, she managed to get a bath towel beneath her listless frame, to prevent blood from penetrating the tile grout"

In a class action loss against Bayer for harms caused by its Essure contraceptive device, some saw familiar failures of medicine and the law when it comes to female bodies

23/04/2025

Health practitioners admitting there's an issue with devices, that’s a start. But it appears others like things just the way they are, and in fact want greater liability protection.

Based on the carnage they get away with inflicting, I think they have more than enough liability protection already!

And I wonder where they got those stats from 🤔
Is someone actually finally taking notice?

https://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/2024-10/Regulatory%20Impact%20Statement_%20Product%20and%20activity%20controls%20for%20medical%20devices.pdf

21/04/2025

Our medical laws are not patient centric.
One can only hope that one day, so-called therapeutic implants will get a much needed reclassification and some regulatory oversight.

https://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/2024-09/H2024038651%20Briefing%20Advice%20on%20an%20active%20petition%20relating%20to%20Essure%2C%20a%20permanent%20contraceptive_0.pdf