Huakina Ready And Waiting For Whānau Ora Support Teams

Huakina Development Trust Tumuaki Maria Clarke can’t wait for the arrival of the Whānau Ora Vaccination Battalion support crew to Pukekohe.

The mobile teams from west Auckland have been supporting vaccinations in Manurewa and Papakura, and are heading further south to Pukekohe today.

“We have around 2000 in the Pukekohe area and more in the Tuakau-Port Waikato areas who are unvaccinated,” Maria said. “We are looking forward to the arrival of the Whānau Ora team and happy to have their support.”

Maria said those unvaccinated in her region have a deep mistrust of the government and its messaging.

“As soon as they made it mandatory, that turned a few of our people away from vaccinations,” she said.

“Plus the MoH have taken our statistics to show how bad we are at vaccinations. We are the ethnicity that doesn’t look good. But we will carry on and encourage Māori to come and get vaccinated.

“We are doing outreach and will continue to do so.”

The Huakina Trust were first movers when Covid first came to town.

After a discussion with Dr Lance Sullivan, they imported their own Flu vaccine from Australia to support their kaumatua with breathing and wellness and to be used as another tool alongside the Pfizer vaccine.

Now they are doing “whatever it takes” to get to those hard to reach whānau.

Huakina is a part of the Whānau Ora Collective.

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