Congratulations on behalf of all HSANZ to the following members who were honoured recently:

Professor Erica Wood AO from Monash University for distinguished service to transfusion medicine and haemovigilance, to haematology, and to national and international organisations,

Professor Harshall Nandurker AM from Australian Centre for Blood Diseases at Alfred Hospital for significant service to medicine, particularly as a haematologist 

Dr Ruth Spearing CNZM for services to haematology. Ruth offered a few words following acceptance of her honour.

I feel as if I am accepting this on behalf of all the NZ haematologists.

It was great being the NZ PI for most of the UK studies, especially AML ( though initially also CLL/MM etc) after Mike Beard stepped down in 1993. We managed to get our dreaded Pharmac to agree to pay for the mylotarg in 2015 for AML19 which meant we could take part in that trial which was probably my biggest single achievement!

I was very active in medical politics here in NZ for close on 20 years