Primary Health Care is said to have changed the locks on the premises of Kippax Family Practice ''to protect'' my medical records which are ''being transferred to the Ginninderra clinic'' where I can ''access them''.
I've been a patient of Jamie Cookman's since moving to Canberra around 12 years ago.
The way I see it is that my records, along with the records of hundreds of others, have in fact been stolen by Primary Health Care and its assertion (''Clinic withers in doctor drought'', March 18, p2) there were only 100 patients there is a joke.
There is no way I will attend the big Ginninderra Clinic, so I will need my records to take to the practice of my choice.
I'd be surprised if there aren't many other patients requesting the same.
I assume the patient records are all on computer, not hard-copy, files.
So Primary Health Care will need a lot of CDs and a lot of person-hours to give us all back our patient records, won't they. And certainly Primary Health Care is a misnomer for a company that seems to put profitability at the top, and care of patients at the bottom, of its list of priorities.
Merrill Moore, Macgregor
Quit cowardly war
With reports of a second soldier being killed in Afghanistan in the space of a week (''Blast kills another digger'', March 20, p1), it is time the Australian Government informed the incoming Obama Administration that a continuation of the ''war on terror'' against an increasingly morphed coalition of Taliban and al-Qaeda militants has proved to be an utter political and military disaster.
The deaths of Australian soldiers involved in ground operations inside Afghanistan is all the more poignant given the fact that the frontline battle against the militants is being conducted elsewhere, inside Pakistan, through the deployment of pilotless drones (or unmanned aerial vehicles).
These lethally armed UAVs are being ''flown'' by pilots stationed at computer consoles in the relative safety of places like Nellis Air Force Base outside Las Vegas.
In spite of the fact that the Obama Administration is planning to send an extra 40,000 ground forces for the [northern] summer offensive, the US military is becoming increasingly dependent on bombardment from unmanned aerial missile strikes.
The question that now remains is whether the Rudd Government will pull our forces out of this cowardly war, or whether it will take heed of the Chinese Government's plausible suggestion of a United Nations peacekeeping force composed largely of Muslim soldiers.
Reverend Dr Vincent Zankin, Rivett
Silence on condoms
It is heartening to read that Jim Wallace (Letters, March 20) favours delivery of family planning services within the Australian aid program.
He should note, however, the following from Foreign Minister Stephen Smith's press release of March 10, ''Since the introduction of the Family Planning Guidelines in 1996, there has been a significant decline in funding from the aid program across the range of family planning activities from 0.44per cent ($6.9m) in 1995-96 to only 0.07 per cent ($2.3m) in 2006/07, adversely affecting the capacity to deliver better outcomes in maternal and child health.'' In other words, the ban (now lifted) on aid money going to non-government organisations that advised on or provided abortions had the indirect effect of reducing family planning funding by two-thirds.
Perhaps we could hear from Mr Wallace on the Pope's denunciation of condom use to prevent the spread of HIV (''Pope's condom call sparks global outcry'', March 20, p10). If Mr Wallace, like the Belgian Health Ministry, thinks it is ''stupefying'', he should say so.
There are a lot of pro-choice, pro-condom Christians out there who could equally claim to be an Australian Christian Lobby.
Catholics for Choice springs to mind.
Jenny Goldie, Michelago
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