HOSPITAL NEEDED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 152, 28 June 1940, Page 10

HOSPITAL NEEDED.

CARE OF CHILDREN. MRS. GILMER'S COMMENTS. (From Our Correspondent.) WELLIXGTOX, Thursday. The urgent need for an orthopaedic •hospital in Wellington was stressed by Mrs. E. M. Gilmer- at a meeting of the Wellington Hospital Board to-night. "It is a great surprise to me that members of.the ljoard agreed to spend public money on a henhouse at Rongotai when they forgot the chicken cooj> in our own hospital grounds, and that is all 011 your heads," said Mrs. Gilmer, referring to the purchase of the Exhibition Hotel for a nurses' home.

Mrs. Gilmer said nurses who had to live in a room only spent their evenings in their room. There were children in the hospital who spent months, and sometimes years, cooped up in a pen in the children's hospital without the sunshine and;:fresh air so necessary to their improvement and restoration to health. She said she was going to see if the board could sj>end some money on something to help the: children. The life of each child was worth more than that of three old fogeys.

The chairman, 3vi"r. F. Castle, said some months ago members of the board went to see a site in ' the country for an ' orl'liopaedic hospital. He was not familiar with all the reasons for dropping that proposal. He would see it was brought ; lip before the polio j' and' finance committee.'

Mr.• A. H. Carman said ho thought the question of an orthopaedic hospital was left to the Health Department.