The Government is defending its child health record in the face of opposition accusations that third world diseases are rampant in New Zealand.
National's health spokesman, Tony Ryall, says Labour talked a lot but did nothing during nine years in government.
"Over the past couple of years children's avoidable hospital admissions have been at their lowest in a decade," he says.
"Immunisation rates have increased and 22,000 children in the most at-risk areas are part of a $12 million throat swabbing and antibiotic follow-up programme to fight rheumatic fever."
Labour's deputy leader, Annette King, on Monday said everyone should watch a "sickening" documentary on child poverty to be screened on Tuesday night.
The investigation says up to 150 babies who died in New Zealand last year might well be alive if they had been born in Sweden, Japan or even the Czech Republic.
Filmmaker Bryan Bruce explores almost 100 years of child welfare and reveals how child health has deteriorated in recent years.
It follows a report which found 200,000 New Zealand children live in poverty, more than half of them Maori or Pacific Island.
Ms King says it's going to be a wake-up call for every member of the government.
"The prime minister has been in denial about this country's poverty problem for years," she said.
"He has shunned numerous attempts to address the issue through a cross-party approach and dismissed the concerns of experts working in the field as `rubbish'."
Ms King says last year more than 25,000 children were admitted to hospital with respiratory infections while cases of meningitis and rheumatic fever - diseases usually associated with third world countries - are at unprecedented levels.
The documentary, Inside New Zealand: Inside Child Poverty is to be screened on TV3 at 7.30pm.
NZN