MEDICAL CARE FOR RELIEF WORKERS

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21404, 21 February 1935, Page 9

MEDICAL CARE FOR RELIEF WORKERS

* HOSPITAL BOARD CONSIDERS COMPLAINT (PRESS ASSOCIATION TELEGRAM.^ AUCKLAND, February 20. Consideration was given by the Auckland Hospital Board yesterday to a recent complaint by the New Zealand Unemployed Workers' Association that doctors had refused to attend indigent relief workers unless payment was forthcoming. The Auckland Division of the British Medical Association, in a letter to the board, said it had informed the association that the treatment of the indigent sick was a matter for the Hospital Board. The British Medical Association was more than willing to co-operate with the association in any scheme for the organised relief of sickness among the unemployed. The chairman of the board, Mr W. Wallace, said the man, around whom the complaint was centred, had visited the board's dispensary on the day before the alleged incidents, and, though the medical officer advised him to enter hospital, he refused. "If a doctor goes out at night to an indigent case," added Mr Wallace, "the board will gladly pay his fee." He had interviewed several doctors who had said they were quite willing to attend such cases if the board would provide medicine. "All honour to them," he said. It was mentioned that arrangements were being made to supply medicine where it was required, and that the board had spent a considerable sum in sending doctors and an ambulance to relief camps.