T.B. INVESTIGATION.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 118, 21 May 1928, Page 8

T.B. INVESTIGATION.

DR. BLACKMORE PROTESTS.

"SPECIALISTS PUT ON TRIAL."

BIAS AGAINST SOUTH ISLAND.

(By Telegrapn.—Own Correspondent.)

CHRISTCHURCH, Sunday

The allegation that the committee of three doctors appointed by the Health Department was appointed with the dbject of discrediting " the work that has been done and is being done in the South Island " was made by Dr. G. J. Blackmore, director of tuberculosis institutions in North Canterbury.

" When I spoke to members of Parliament last.week," said Dr. Blackmore, "I said the Health Department was appointing a commission to try to discredit the work that "had been done, and was bein«* done, in the South Island, and the com" mission meant that specialists in the South Island were being put on their trial by the Department. I know it was said I was mistaken, but I -was speaking with a little inside knowledge as to the causes that brought about this commisjsion."

"You notice by what the Minister of Health has said that the commission is to find out whether consumptives are being properly diagnosed; whether they are being properly treated; and wliethejr

they are being kept under treatment too long. I think it will be found a little difficult now to contradict statements I made to the members of Parliament as to the real objects of the commission.

"For some time the Director-General of Health has been trying to interfere with the treatment of patients here and at Waipiata. Not long ago he went privately to members of the Hospital Board here—that means not to the board in open meeting—and said I was keeping patients too long under treatment, and that if I did not do so there would be ample accommodation for the consumptives who wished to come in." " Remarkable Proposition."

" That was the reason for the remarks I made in ni.y annual report last month, as to the remarkable proposition put forward to send out cases that had been taken into the Coronation Hospital from their very unsuitable surroundings and let them return to their homes, probably to infect other people, in order to take in similar cases from similar homes and then later treat them in the same way. " There is now no talk of the commission formulating a policy to deal with tuberculosis in New Zealand, or even to try to find out new facts about the disease. If the experts are not to be the ones to decide about the diagnosis and treatment of consumptives, who then is to decide? Is the Health Department to put forward a scheme for diagnosing and treating consumptives that is to be followed by men who have had special training in this work and have for years been devoting their whole time to dealing with tuberculosis?"