TUBERCULOSIS PATIENTS

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27073, 23 June 1953, Page 10

TUBERCULOSIS PATIENTS

REHABILITATION AND AFTER CARE

MORE PRIVATE EARNINGS SUGGESTED A further means of assisting the resettlement of a tuberculous Pa“en‘ was suggested by the president (Dr. W. G. Rich) to the annual meeting of the northern group of the South Isla ' ld Tuberculosis Association last evening. The greatest difficulty o» all in rehabilitation and resettlement, he said, was that of finance and there was a way of encouraging the patient to help himself. . , , . “At present the sickness benefit is £5 15s for a family to live on,” he said. “Thirty shillings is allowed as.income, including both the wife and husband, but after that the pension is proportionately reduced. In other words we tie a family down to £7 5s a week; a family needing more protective foods than the next, and those foods require money to buy. _ “Why not let the former patient keep a fair proportion of every pound he can earn, without prejudice to his existing pension. By this means we tide the patient over that awful time of waiting and thinking; his body ana mind are actively employed, without prejudice to his health. He well knows that he still has £5 15s at the back of what he earns.” Dr. Rich said a recommendation to that effect had gone to the Minister of Health (Mr J. R. Marshall) from the council of the federation of associations. • . , • Housing, food, and clothing were items that must take a prominent part in after-care, and it was possible that in the past, in the effort to find suitable work, insufficient attention had been paid to the equally important items. Approximately £lOOO had been spent on patients’ aid during the year. Chiefly, it had been in the nature f of clothing, but had included monetary grants. The Social Security Department had helped with the provision of clothing, and the Government had set aside the sum of* £200,000 to help pensioners. The association had been able to give further assistance by providing an economic pension or subsidising wages in the early stages of rehabilitation, when the patient vzas unable to earn a full week’s wage. “One of the biggest difficulties in rehabilitation is economic pressure forcing a person to try to worker harder than he should in the early stages of convalescence, with the result that not infrequently the former patient enters the sanatorium for a second time,” Dr. Rich continued.

“The problem of finding suitable work for the ex-tuberculous is not always easy, and can be very difficult, because by and large the amount of work the tuberculous can do. even when their disease is arrested, is usually less than that done by normal persons.”

CONVALESCENT HOME

COST CONSIDERED TOO GREAT Some years ago the association had set as a target £25,000 for the provision of a home for patients convalescing after tuberculosis, said Mr F. S. Taylor, a vice-president, at the annual meeting of the South Island Tuberculosis Association last evening. “With the cost of living and servicing today I am satisfied that buying a home is far too costly,” he said. Mr Taylor said the best way of providing convalescent treatment was by co-operating with persons willing to board former patients. During the year five country families offered to accept former patients who in exchange for their keep would work part-time at odd jobs and pay a small sum in addition.

Reverting to the home proposal, Mr Taylor - said he had been told that one home for aged persons not far from Christchurch could board its inmates at the best hotel in New Zealand for six months for the cost of keeping them in the home for a year.