ADVANCED CASES

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 99, 28 April 1928, Page 10

ADVANCED CASES

NEED FOR SEGREGATION (By Telegraph.) (Special to "The Evening Post.") CHRISTCHUKCH, This Day. "It is useless trying to combat tuberculosis unless ample provision is made to deal with and segregate the most infectious advanced cases, because so long as nothing is done for them they arc persistently scattering tho seed which will produce a plentiful crop of tuberculosis cases in the next generation," said Dr. G. J. Blackmorc, Medical Director of Tuberculosis Institutions, in his report to the annual meeting yesterday. "The crying need of the institutions hero at the present time is for more accommodation for cases of advanced tuberculosis among women," said Dr. Blackmorc. '' If anything i3 to be done for these more advanced cases, it ought to be done without delay. It is not as if these patients could afford to be properly treated outside. Most of them cannot, and to tell them they cannot receive treznment for six or eight months is simply to condemn most of them to death. "The suggestion has been made to the board that inoro accommodation would not bo required for advanced cases if patients were not kept so long in the Coronation Hospital. In effect, this means that these cases of infectious disease, who nearly all come from homes where they are living under bad conditions, or are exposing others to infection, are to be taken in, treated more or less ineffectually for a comparatively short time, and then returned to their bad homos to continue the infective process there. In order to admit similar cases living under the same conditions and deal with them in a similar manner, it is difficult to conceive the state of mind of one, especially a doctor, .who could seriously put forward such an extraordinary proposal. "The Coronation Hospital was specially built not only to give advanced cases of disease the best chance of recovery—and the figures given show that numbers of lives have been saved there—but also to ensure that these patients should not be left in homes where they would be a constant menace to others. The scheme proposed would completely do away with the function of the Coronation Hospital as a preventive agency." DEPARTMENT CRITICISED. Further protests against the alleged lack of action on the part of tho Dominion health authorities to meet the demand for more accommodation at the Cashmere Sanatoria were made by tho chairman of the North Canterbury Hospital Board's public health committee (Mr. A. T. Smith) at a meeting of tho board yesterday. The discussion followed the reading of a letter from the Director-General of Health (Dr. T. H. A. Valintine), advising the appointment of a medical commission of inquiry, and urging tho board to await its report. Mr. Smith said that he was very hurt about tho matter, and he would not like to express himself in "horse" language or "sergeant-major" language. Ho quoted figures for 1927 showing the number of applications for admission and the number of admissions. "Then women in advanced stages of consumption have died becauso they could not be taken," added Mr. Smith. "Only three women died in the Coronation Hospital. Tho onus is on Wellington, for our board has dono everything possible." Dr. Stanley P. Foster said that tho sanatoria were not giving treatment in tho best interests of public health. Tho sanitoria were taking bordorlino cases, which had preference over tho bad cases. This was tho policy of the director of tho sanitoria. It gave a high percentage of cures. However, it might pay the board to buy a. farm near Oxford, and thero treat the borderline cases, leaving the sanitoria for the badly infectious cases. Action was held over pending the report of the Commission.