Throughout 2024, the then-Health Minister Dr Shane Reti and his team put together a revitalised FASD Action Plan which promised to finally begin addressing the enormous scale of the impact of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder in Aotearoa.
In January 2025 in a surprise move, the coalition government sacked Dr Reti and put Simeon Brown in charge of the health portfolio, a minister with no background in health at all.
We need the new Health Minister to progress Dr Reti's work, as Otago University expert Anita Gibbs explains in an article published on January 30, 2025.
Click here to read.
Background
• April 2024 first FASD Action Plan revitalisation announcement
• September 2024 further announcement
• Nurture the Future Within awareness campaign launch
In 2024, two new studies were published which both showed how much FASD impacts our society – and economy.
• NZIER estimated the cost of harm from FASD to be $4.8 billon
• Massey University published the first study globally which showed FASD has the highest impact for alcohol harm to others – enormously more than car crashes or alcohol-fuelled violence.