Patient advocate Melissa Vining has worked tirelessly to improve cancer services and helped establish the Southland Charity Hospital. Photo: Supplied / Facebook
Melissa Vining has slammed the wait times faced by Southland cancer patients, revealing her family has once again been touched by cancer after the death of her husband.
The cancer care advocate made the revelation to Susie Ferguson on Saturday Morning, while describing the almost weekly correspondence she has with patients facing longer than expected wait times to cancer diagnostic services at Southern District Health Board, now Te Whatu Ora Southern.
Patients who contacted her are being told they will be seen within six to eight weeks by a specialist after receiving a cancer diagnosis, compared to the nationally recommended target of four, she said.
"People's disease progresses, and in some cases, people die before they get seen by the medical oncologist."
Her husband Blair, 39, died in October 2019 of bowel cancer after receiving his diagnosis - and a letter of his own which said he would have to wait 12 weeks to see an oncologist, when he was given even less time to live.
Blair Vining and his daughters Lily and Della-May. Photo: Facebook/Blair Vining
The couple dedicated the last 11 months of Blair's life to improving cancer care for all New Zealanders, organising a petition for a national cancer agency, which gained 140,000 signatures.
Blair and Melissa also campaigned for a charity hospital to be built in Southland, to improve access to cancer treatment, which was completed earlier this year.
Bricks bought to support the Southland Charity Hospital. Photo: Supplied / Facebook
But Vining said locals should not have to rely on building their own charity hospital in order to receive care.
And five years on Melissa describes the almost doubling of wait times as "heartwrenching", a health system failure that has once again affected her personally.
"My dad is a really fortunate cancer survivor, so he's had colorectal cancer, but was diagnosed early and received treatment and was completely cured."
But he is now nine months overdue for follow-up colonoscopies, vital for monitoring and catching the disease in the early stages should it reappear.
Her brother too previously received surgery to remove polyps, a clump of cells that can become cancerous.
But what's "scary," said Melissa, is that now her brother is also 18 months overdue for a screening, despite displaying symptoms of colorectal cancer.
"He's on the symptomatic list ... [but] basically, they don't know when they can see him due to capacity.
"The months just keep ticking by. It's frightening to think that we could lose another one or two family members.
"My brother has two children. It's just completely unfair."
Melissa Vining during the construction of the Southland Charity Hospital. Photo: RNZ / Tess Brunton
Two of the patients were also are good friends of hers, but while both were able to be seen by a private specialist, this solution is out of reach for many, she said.
"And for all the families in [Southland] and in Otago that are experiencing these long waits and not able to access timely diagnosis or treatment, is heartbreaking, it's completely wrong.
"No one in New Zealand should be dying from colorectal cancer. It's completely curable."
In April last year, Health and Disability Commissioner, Morag McDowell, released a highly critical report, revealing cancer patients in Otago and Southland were told they had to wait longer to see a cancer specialist than they had time to live.
That was followed up with a report released February this year.
Far from showing improvement, doctors said in the report the situation in some departments had gotten worse.
One radiation oncologist - only identified as "Dr E" - told the commission the department was "sorely understaffed" in terms of senior doctors, and the service was "more at risk now than it was when the [original] report was written".
As a result, patient outcomes were "potentially compromised".
A number of recommendations were made in the report but Melissa said the problem comes down to funding.
She said it is the government's "blatant lack of accountability" for the current crisis that she finds most galling.
"The Health and Disability Commissioner, she can only provide recommendations to the health provider ... but if [Health New Zealand, Te Whatu Ora] is starved of resources, who holds the government to account?
"Who holds those politicians to account when they are not delivering an appropriate amount of resourcing?
"We all pay tax, and it shouldn't matter where you live. It shouldn't matter if you have money or not. We should all be able to access an appropriate standard of basic medical care."
"It just needs sorted out so that good people aren't dying unnecessarily."
Craig Ashton, the acting southern group director of operations for Health New Zealand said in a statement that while they "endeavour to ensure that we can offer the appropriate specialist appointment in the recommended timeframes, sometimes the demand on the service exceeds our ability."
Ashton said this was due to staff vacancies and a recent upgrade to the endoscopy suite at Southland Hospital.
"We have offered some patients appointments during the weekends, at a private facility or in Dunedin.
"We continue to focus heavily on recruitment and retention of our specialist workforce and continuing to strengthen our clinical governance quality and performance through a range of new initiatives."
He noted that the National Bowel Screening Programme has tested 118,000 people across the district since it began in 2017, successfully catching 377 instances of bowel cancer.
Some patients on surveillance colonoscopies have waited longer than the recommended time frames due to staff vacancies and a recent facility upgrade to the endoscopy suite at Southland Hospital which was completed over August and September, he said.
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