MONEY FOR ILL-HEALTH

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 180, 1 August 1944, Page 4

MONEY FOR ILL-HEALTH

F t -nrhinVi •+ f a ° . war ' f nc * then the actuality, with all the exigencies the Aurkinnri las given rise > has made the task of those administering In the <=;prif>c p SP1 f system more than usually difficult in recent years, the Auckland Qt art^ cles °n the subject which have been published in ha« takon T-.i 3r ? le s beGn emphasised the great expansion which accommnrtat ' f° in the main hospital alone, although this now Board? fn rt 1 * ghtly more than half the P atien ts in the Hospital nearlv mnnn 10!', t p tal of in-patients, 12,298 in 1936, became canity 1 n ' In the same P eri °d the board's maintenance and capital payments rose from £326,000 to £1,056,000, and the estimate for , v ea r approaches £1,200,000. The figures can be regarded in various v " ' ey may he regarded as evidence that the community does not irfli^? So +1 m . Oney for the care of its sick - The y ma y he thought to mmcate that, m a country so favoured as New Zealand, far too many people fall into ill-health serious enough to require hospital treatment r ,r: y ™ yabo be seen as proof that the more the State undertakes to or the individual the more the individual will lean upon it. However . ® y aie regarded, it is important that the community should form some judgment upon them, for the trend is still upward, and nobody at present seems to know the height of the ceiling. Men, women and cmidren fall ill and are ordered hospital treatment, the hospitals are ound to admit them if they have room, and the hospital boards meet the cost and pass it on to the State and to the local taxpayer. There is a kind of automatism in the procedure, and it is surely time that a bold effort was made to bring it under control.

, i 1; had been proposed that within the Auckland hospital should be spent a sum of half a million pounds on health H 1 its widest sense, there would have been an outcry, and xne proposal, if it found even a seconder, would have been rejected out ° h a nd. ■ Yet m the same area there will be spent, in this one year, a sum about £800,000 greater than was spent in 1936, and it' will be spent to cure, or at least to treat, those who have fallen ill and been sent to hospital. This sum does not include the cost of treating those who are not ill enough to go to hospital, or go to private hospitals. It is not; to be supposed that money spent on health promotion would obviate all need for hospitals, but it is certain that it would obviate the need of a great deal of it. Why is that money not spent? The need to consider.this question, and to act, is the greater because of the clear evidence that the increasing expenditure pf on' treatment of people after they have become ill is "getting us nowhere." Auckland to-day has not a hospital system with which anybedy is satisfied, and millions of pounds may have to be spent to "modernise" it. There is apparently little agreement on how the millions should be spent, though no doubt these difficulties could be overcome if the money were available. But the question, which of course does not affect Auckland alone, is whether the time is not for a different approach to the problem, from the angle of health promotion. New hospitals, new equipment, better training and conditions—all the objects for which more money might be spent—will serve one purpose only. They will tend to make it more probable that, when a person falls ill, h€? or she will have a better chance of recovery. But it is very doubtful if all such expenditure will make it less probable that that person will fall ill, or that the total numbers of persons falling ill will not then be greater. Experience, especially since the social security medical and hospital benefits wer® introduced, suggests that the more that is spent on ill-health the more there will have to be spent. Is it not time to spend much more on health? .