[Margaret Pilkington]

Doug, when I was last in Oz, Uncle Toby's...which is like our Quaker Oat Breakfast cereal maker, sponsored caravans in all the shopping malls....there was a nurse present and she would weigh you, check your blood pressure.....do a fingerprick test for diabetes and also for a cholseterol reading. All these things were fed into her laptop and it generated a read out for you to take to your own Doctor. She did not promote the products made by the sponsoring company but on the way out one of the company workers gave you a bag of goodies.....all healthy, low salt/sugar cereals and snack bars with a heap of leaflets on healthy life styles.

I thought these were a fairly good idea.......and I think it could be done over here.....it wouldn't even need nurses to do the checks......just someone who could do the checks and feed the info into a laptop.

I think we expect far too much from our GP's and their time should be taken up with caring for those who are ill.

I feel that if these proposals become reality, many GP's will have technicians doing the checks......and maybe nurses monitoring the results and only weeding out those who need to see the GP for further health intervention.