Arise, Sir Ashley

by Ann Packer

Eastbourne’s newest knight is Sir Ashley Bloomfield, former Director-General of Health.

Dr Ashley Robin Bloomfield, who lives in Lowry Bay, was made a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to public health in the New Year’s honours list.

Dr Bloomfield became Director-General in 2018, while acting chief executive of the Capital and Coast District Health Board.

In 2019 he had to deal with a measles outbreak and the Whakaari/White Island eruption. Then on 27 January 2020, the virtually unknown DG introduced himself to the nation at the first public briefing on what was then simply called “a coronavirus”.

When the Eastbourne Herald interviewed him in July 2020, Sir Ashley was already saying we needed to be ready for another wave of the virus. They did indeed keep coming. And after announcing in April 2022 that he was stepping down, he himself tested positive for Covid-19 in May 2022, when in Geneva at the World Health Assembly.

Sir Ashley and his wife Dr Libby Bloomfield (she is not going to use the courtesy title Lady) are staying put in Wellington, with some commuting to Auckland for his new role as a professor working in the School of Population Health at Auckland University, where he did his medical and public health degrees.

“The role, which is part-time, is focused on the public policy interface – so it makes sense for me to be largely in Wellington,” he says.

The other role he’s already started is cochairing the review of the WHO International Health Regulations (IHR), one of the flowon pieces of work from the review of the international response to the pandemic that Helen Clark co-chaired (https:// theindependentpanel.org/).

“It’s basically a negotiation by countries of amendments to strengthen the IHR to make sure we are better prepared for the next pandemic – challenging but interesting and important.”