NEWS HR
May 16, 2018
A tornado has reportedly ripped through a Tauranga retirement village in Pyes Pa. “Fences are down, a shed has gone walkabouts,” said a witness. “It’s just blown up awful.” Metservice meteorologist Tom Adams said tornadoes were incredibly rare “but that’s not to say it didn’t happen”. Adams said he was not able to confirm the weather event via the Metservice network at this stage.
May 16, 2018
Kim Ma’ia’i, director of the University of Otago’s Student Health Service, is stepping down. After 17 years with the service, 14 of them as director, Dr Ma’ia’i said he would now be working on various, unspecified, health-related activities.
May 9, 2018
A Waikato support worker who raped an intellectually disabled man, targeted him due to his mental impairment, a judge found. Gerald Christian Albert is now behind bars serving an 11-year jail term after a jury found the 53-year-old guilty of eight charges including one representative charge of having intercourse with the victim after a trial last year. Albert was sentenced in the Hamilton District Court in November, but his victim was still feeling the effects of what happened to him between 2005 and 2007, his mother said. However, she said both she and her son were pleased with the sentence handed down by Justice Glen Marshall and hoped they could now begin to move on with their lives.
May 8, 2018
A Pakuranga man’s mum was nearly scammed thousands of dollars by someone from Christchurch. An Auckland family is warning people to check their credit histories after scammers tried to take out of thousands of dollars in loans under their mother’s name. Shanil Sharma from Auckland’s Pakuranga said his mum, a 56-year-old retirement village care worker, nearly lost $37,000 to scammers. Sharma, 35, said the scammers applied for loans to several banks and a string of finance companies over a year, using his mother’s details.
May 4, 2018
A long-serving Napier GP has had his practicing certificate suspended by the Medical Council and has sold out of his central city clinic. Alexander Luft, 58, is a Canadian doctor who had practiced in Napier since 1989. He had been working at the Clive Square Medical Centre, which he set up in 2001, until late last year, when patients were told via the clinic’s website that he would be retiring as of November 17. The website did not mention the fact that the Medical Council had suspended Luft’s practicing certificate from that day. The Medical Council will not say why the certificate was suspended.
May 3, 2018
Kaitaia’s Jenny Kitchen retires from Switzer care management.
May 1, 2018
A teenage girl died after a radiologist failed to spot a lesion in an MRI scan, a Health and Disability Commission report released today shows. The case has prompted Commissioner Anthony Hill to order an independent review of the radiology service, including rostering and staffing levels, because of poor work conditions, which contributed to the error. Hill found the radiologist breached the Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers’ Rights for missing a lesion in the girl’s scan eight months before it was finally discovered.
May 1, 2018
Police are looking for three men with links to the Hells Angels gang after gang rivalry erupted, ending with the violent assault of a security guard in Auckland City Hospital.
