Our lovely nurse, Joy - pictured on the left in this image,  is to be married in July.  Hearts are breaking all over Sumner as she has charmed young and old over the last two years. 

We are overjoyed that she has found love and devastated that she has chosen to go and live in the USA with her new man, a Dentist no less. 

Joy's last day of work will be 17th May this year so if you need a last smile from her, better make it quick!

If you have needed a prescription over the last month or so you may have noticed a bit of a change.

Your prescription now has a barcode and number in the bottom right hand corner. This is because we are now producing the new NZePS electronic prescriptions, which means the information necessary for your prescription is now sent directly to your pharmacy when they scan the code.

Sumner Health Centre is one of the first practices in Christchurch to be using this innovative new system.  The other is our sister practice in Hei Hei.

October 2016 sees a change to the way two key funding streams for general practice will be administered.  Funding currently allocated to the Care Plus stream and to High Use Health Cards will be pooled into 'ECAP' Extended Capitation funding to be used to benefit all patients in our practice.  So, what does this mean for you?

A common question we get asked is why we charge for repeat prescriptions. 

Several patients have commented that this is "Money for Old Rope" and as this is not an uncommonly held perspective, we felt it would be worth explaining why there is a fee and what it covers:

An interesting study soon to be published in Neurology journal has shown some promising biomarker changes which suggest that the popular supplement resveratrol is worthy of further study to see if it might slow progression in Alzheimer's disease.

An interesting question was raised recently - Should a woman in her late 30s with no partner store her eggs as insurance against declining fertility in the future?

The situation is quite clear - eggs stored before the age of 40 are much more likely to result in successful pregnancies than eggs harvested fresh a few years later so if you turn out to have difficulty conceiving later in life then a few eggs ready to use will increase the chances of a successful pregnancy and reduce the risk of some genetic disorders in any children.

A very interesting discussion on Radio New Zealand's This Way Up programme this weekend (19/04/2015) sparked some thinking about superfoods.

Measles has been in the news in the USA recently and with cases in Christchurch, a scare in Sumner in March 2015 and outbreaks occurring regularly in New Zealand, it is time to review the immunisation status of your children.

Measles is not a minor childhood illness - it is very infectious so spreads quickly and can kill - 1 in 1000 children will be harmed permanently by measles and half of those will die.

The good news is that with immunisation it is possible to prevent both infection initially and the spread of the disease.

In the search for the perfect figure without having to starve, we are often tempted to turn to one or more of the many slimming supplements on the market at the moment.  We are often asked about Garcinia cambogia (GC) so we have picked apart the existing evidence for this supplement.  If you are thinking of taking any product containing GC or HydroxyCitricAcid (HCA), read on..

A new study has shown that glucosamine and chondroitin can be as effective as the prescription only painkiller Celecoxib in moderate to severe knee arthritis, so is there something in this old favourite supplement?