GOVERNMENT SPENDING ON HOSPITALS

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28988, 1 September 1959, Page 8

GOVERNMENT SPENDING ON HOSPITALS

The opening of the Princess Margaret Hospital was an

especially notable event in the development of New Zealand’s hospital works programme, the Minister of Health (Mr Mason) said at the official opening yesterday. From 1959 to 1963—the period covered by the present programme —large sums of money would be spent on hundreds of hospital works, ranging from completely new hospitals to additional staff quarters and boiler room alterations, the Minister said.

“It could be asked: ‘Why, in a country as reputedly healthy as New Zealand, is there such a pressing need for more hospitals and extensions to existing ones?’ The answer is, of course, to meet not a rising incidence of sickness, but the needs of a rapidly-increasing population,” Mr Mason said.

This was signalised . by the gigantic Greenlane scheme at Auckland which would emerge in three or four years as the new National Women’s Hospital, New Zealand’s biggest maternity hospital, he said. Sketch plans had been authorised for new maternity hospitals in Waikato, the Wellington area, the West Coast and in South Canterbury. “All this accounts for a large proportion of the building programme we have in hand at present. This is only one way in which an increasing population calls for more hospitals,” he said. Treatment Methods It was the Government’s intention to introduce as widely as possible the most modern methods of treatment; the use of radioactive cobalt for example, Mr Mason said. “The North Canterbury Hospital Board has actually pioneered the use of this method of treatment in New Zealand, and a Can-adian-built cobalt therapy unit has been in use in Christchurch Hospital for nearly three years now. Plans for similar units in other centres have been sanctioned.” Perhaps the biggest item on the hospital programme was the replacement and repair of existing hospitals, said Mr Mason. Many hospitals were now old and were designed to cater for com-

pgratively small: communities, not the growing citijes of today. “Because of this, the design of many falls far short of standards required today; hence they have become overcrowded in some instances, and difficult to run,” he said. “Adding new blocks to old hospitals is no simple or inexpensive matter. The provision of another 40 or 60 beds, for example, probably means a bigger nurses’ home. These two additions mean more laundry facilities, which in turn necessitates a larger boiler room. And so the work and cost snowballs. “Here, in the old Christchurch Hospital, you have an example of a hospital where improvements are much needed, where some, of the wards and facilities are not, unfortunately, of the desirable standard,” said Mr Mason. “This new hospital will enable part of the old one to be vacated and handed over to the builders for improvement. With this magnificent example close at hand, we may expect to see the old hospital made into a much better one in the .near future.”