Dr Lance O’Sullivan is a much loved and widely respected GP in the Far North. He has received numerous accolades includ-ing that of “New Zealander of the Year 2014”. 

What these tributes don’t describe is the warmth and personal connection that Lance makes with those whom he meets. I had the privilege of asking him how he became known as the GP who fixes peoples roofs!

“What motivated me to get into the healthy homes project was sitting in my clinic and having person after person come in for nebulisers and I thought, “There is something wrong here. There must be something else driving these people’s health problems. I’m just putting a plaster on them. I think the problem might be unhealthy homes that are causing unhealthy families.”

“So one day I finished up and I decided to drive around the community. I knocked on a few people’s doors and said “Look, I know this sounds really unusual but my name is Lance and I’m one of the local doctors and I’m trying to get an understanding of what is causing some of the illnesses that I see in my clinic. I’m just thinking that some of the health issues that your family has may be because of your home.”

“The first thing that struck me was that no one said that I was being nosy or rude or that I was judging them for being poor. Not at all. Everyone just said, “Great, come on in.”

“One particular home I walked into was a two-bedroom home but everyone lived in the lounge. There were four children under the age of seven and a grandmother and then another young family who slept in a sleep-out. They didn’t have any heating so they heated up the lounge by turning on the oven and opening the oven door. This home had 50-cent sized holes in the roof — you could see leak stains on the ceiling.

“When I went into the lounge they said, “You think this is bad. You should come and have a look at the rest of the house.” The whole house was damp and rotting. The hot water cylinder was overflowing and it was rotting out both the inside and outside walls. So much so that one of the walls was really unstable. Added to this the water overflow meant that they couldn’t afford the water bills.

“So I said, “Look clearly this is a big problem for your family and you’ve got young children. I can help as a doctor but let’s see if I can help in another way.” So we started talking.

“The more I talked about it with people, the more people started helping out. A businessman in Hamilton heard about the work that we were doing. He rang me and said, “I like what you’re talking about. What can I do? I own a roofing company and we are roofing a new school up in Kaitaia.” I said, “Can you help out with some labour?” and he said, “Yes”. So he sent around his team.

“One Saturday we went around to that family’s house; a team of builders; two medical students; my son and myself. I was on call at the hospital that day. So I had my phone on my hip while I was on the roof. We all had drills and hammers and we were pulling up old metal and replacing it. We got started on the Saturday and finished on the Sunday. We replaced the hot water cylinder, which made a big difference in terms of water bills. We also replaced the roof — we put a brand new roof on.

“And you know that was a really proud moment because we gave that family a new lease of life. What was needed wasn’t another prescription but a change in their physical living space.

“That example was probably a $10,000-00 exercise that we were lucky to be gifted. But sometimes it’s the simple things. Some people have black plastic bags for windows. The window has been broken and the family can’t afford to replace it. We were able to use money that people had donated to us to replace those windows.

“Some people have little ability to ventilate their house properly. They have a bathroom or the laundry that holds a lot of moisture because it doesn’t have adequate ventilation. It might be for the sake of a $100.00 ventilation system that can reduce dramatically the moisture in the house. At other times it might be things like the trees around the home. So the simple measure of pruning the trees can make a difference in drying out and warming the houses.

“Then there are the cost issues involved in the heating of homes. Some families don’t have a lot of disposable income so using a lot of their money on heating makes life a struggle. Another thing is the insulation of homes. A lot of people are living in homes with no insulation.

“But the whole thing starts by seeing that the role of a doctor is a wide thing. We have a programme in schools where we have staff going into the local schools and doing some health checks. One of the children came up with a significant and worrying skin infection. So I went with the team around to the house to see the child.

“When I was doing a skin examination I realised how cold the home was. It was quite a young family. They were doing the best that they could. They were renting a house that had a heat pump in it. The house was cold except for the two and a half metres around the heat pump. They were spending $40 a week to heat that two and a half square area. I said, “I’m pretty sure this house hasn’t got insulation.” So we decided to have a look and sure enough there wasn’t any. From that we made a referral to the government agency that’s doing retrofitting insulation.

“We talk a lot about the fact that when it comes to health you can’t just look at one thing. You can’t just look at the skin infection and ignore that there is a family living in a cold house with no insulation. We say, “Let’s try and get this house warm for this family.” We have got to go and look at the whole environment.

“It goes to show that people who are struggling are mostly trying to do their best but sometimes they aren’t getting the best advice or given the best means to get the best outcomes.

“I think that New Zealanders are at heart really good and they want to see fairness and I just want to be a part of achieving that. It’s about connecting people. I have been honoured and privileged to be recognised in some pretty special ways but the interesting thing is that we are nowhere near what we can achieve. In a sense we have only got started.”