Ward said the building they planned to move to the Takapau Reserve was a former clinical facility. <\/p>\n
He said the move will allow the health centre to shift from its outdated building to a site large enough to accommodate the new building.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur current building that we reside in, was built in 1911, and it\u2019s just not fit for purpose. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have outgrown it on a number of bases, with capacity, and also it\u2019s just old.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ward said more than 500 people a month used the rural service, which was established in 1989 by local community leaders Lyla Koppen and Anne Lloyd to ensure Takapau retained accessible local healthcare services.<\/p>\n
Over time, the service evolved into a non-enrolling, nurse-led health centre. <\/p>\n
Services include nurse-led primary healthcare, immunisation programmes, cervical screening, ACC services, palliative care support, and contracted GP clinics.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the western world, it is not a good modern space to be running a health service out of,\u201d Ward said. <\/p>\n
The new building will be placed on the Takapau Reserve, and become the new health centre. <\/p>\n
Westside Healthcare director Colin Hutchison said the building set to be purchased by the group was built as a medical centre with five consultation rooms, a procedure room, admin areas and reception.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 109 [Canning Rd] building was our original Medical Centre on the Kaweka Campus.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said it housed medical specialists, including cardiologists, while the main outpatient building was being built. These doctors had all now moved into the main hospital.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are really excited to see this nice medical centre used to expand the care provided by another Hawke\u2019s Bay medical community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ward said the community wanted to keep the old health centre building on Charlotte St in Takapau, rather than demolish it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we went out to the community, the community wanted to make sure there was some historical stuff saved.\u201d<\/p>\n
The project, led by the Takapau Community Health Charitable Trust and supported by a volunteer-led New Build Committee, has been worked on since 2022.<\/p>\n
It also involves repurposing the council-gifted Scout Hall already on the reserve into a community hub.<\/p>\n
Ward said the hub would be used for any \u201ccommunity good activities\u201d, such as courses, legal support, and as a virtual hub for appointments. <\/p>\n
\u201cSince Covid, a lot of people do stuff online, with Zoom and Teams, and there is no facility out here in the village for people to access that if they don\u2019t have it in their own homes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ward said locals had backed the project with project managers, retired developers, and ex-finance auditors, all volunteering their time.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t know who is in your own community and what skills they can contribute; it\u2019s been really neat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ward said the next goal was to fundraise a total of $500,000 for the community hub to transform the Scout Hall and make it operational. <\/p>\n
Michaela Gower joined Hawke\u2019s Bay Today in 2023 and is based out of the Hastings newsroom. She covers Dannevirke and Hawke\u2019s Bay news and loves sharing stories about farming and rural communities. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ward said the building they planned to move to the Takapau Reserve was a former clinical facility. He…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[228469,674,1550,27056,1259,186,71,5194,134,527,3523,24350,111,139,69,6293,162538,4482,1551,68301,8229,61,3257,540,102],"class_list":["post-448409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-115yearold","tag-building","tag-centre","tag-clinic","tag-community","tag-currently","tag-from","tag-hastings","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-medical","tag-modern","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-patients","tag-purchasing","tag-replace","tag-set","tag-takapau","tag-they","tag-to","tag-treat","tag-where","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}