Colin David Mantell

Mantell died peacefully on 3 October 2026 at his home in Wānaka, aged 86. No cause of death was given. A memorial and kawe mate was held at Waipapa Marae at the University of Auckland on 11 November 2026, where generations of Māori and Pacific health professionals gathered and speakers pledged to defend MAPAS, which was then under political pressure.

Colin Mantell was born on 12 October 1939. Of Ngāi Tahu descent, he was raised in Central Otago and educated at King's High School in Dunedin. A Ngarimu University Scholarship took him to the University of Otago to study medicine, where he was in the same class as the future Māori health leader Mason Durie. They were the only two Māori students in the class. "The number of Māori studying medicine was very small. There'd be one some years, none most years, and two very occasionally," he later recalled. He graduated with a Bachelor of Medical Science in 1963 and an MBChB in 1964.

Mantell began his career at Wellington Hospital before moving to Auckland to train in obstetrics and gynaecology at National Women's Hospital. He gained a Diploma in Obstetrics from the University of Auckland in 1968 and Membership of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in 1970, then spent four years in England, including as a lecturer and research fellow at the University of Oxford.

He returned to the University of Auckland in 1973 as a senior lecturer, was appointed professor in 1977 and Head of Obstetrics in 1987, and completed his PhD in 1983. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in 1981 and of the Royal New Zealand College in 1982. His research on foetal physiology, including foetal breathing, along with environmental health and obstetric problems, made him an internationally recognised researcher. In 1996 he was appointed to the new Chair of Māori and Pacific Health alongside his chair in Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

Troubled by the poorer outcomes of Māori and Pacific babies, Mantell used his position at the medical school to build a pathway into the professions. In 1972, with Michael Walker, he helped establish the Polynesian preferential entry scheme for Auckland's medical school, which grew into the Māori and Pacific Admission Scheme. He chaired MAPAS from its formal founding in 1977 until 2005, and colleagues said he grew it from two or three entrants a year to the large intakes it has today. It has produced more than 1,000 graduates.

In the late 1990s he was the driving force behind Vision 20:20, which set a goal that ten per cent of doctors would be Māori by 2020. It introduced a foundation year for Māori and Pacific students, later named Hikitia Te Ora, the Certificate in Health Sciences, built on his belief that students should not feel "always on the outer, always at risk of failure". By 2024 Māori and Pacific professionals made up 13.8 per cent of the health workforce. He was also a founding board member of Tūruki Health Care from 2000.

Mantell was married to Annie, with whom he moved to Oxford and back to New Zealand in 1973, and the couple travelled widely together. His family's death notice named his children Johnny, Chris, Jane, Nick, Tania, Anna and Michelle, his sibling Koa, and grandchildren Peoni, Anita, Paige, Zoe and Katie, and joked that his finest work was convincing Annie to marry him. In later life he lived in Wānaka.

In 2025 the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists gave him its Māori Women's Health Award, and he was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 2026 King's Birthday Honours for services to health education, obstetrics and gynaecology. Professor Papaarangi Reid said: "Generations of students have walked through doors that Colin helped open. His legacy lives in us, in the communities we serve and in the continuing work of MAPAS."