SOCIALISED MEDICINE

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29269, 29 July 1960, Page 15

SOCIALISED MEDICINE

U.S. Specialist’s Comments

In New Zealand to see how medicine functioned under a socialist or semi-socialist form of government, an American haemotologist in Christchurch yesterday said medical care here compared well with the United States.

Dr. William Dameshek. professor of medicine at Tufts University, Boston, is in New Zealand on a lecture tour sponsored by the State Department. From New Zealand he will go on to Australia, Indonesia, and Toyko, where he will attend an international haemotological conference. Dr. Dameshek said medicine in the Dominion seemed to function very well. “In our country we have no socialised medicine,” he said, "and it is far more expensive to be sick in the United States than it is here.” There were minor differences in certain fields of medicine in both countries. Investigation, and research in New Zealand were on a smaller scale perhaps for lack of funds. In the United States funds for research were “very numerous.”

Dr. Dameshek said he was amazed there was only one medical school in the country. In addition to teaching basic subjects, a school had to teach care of patients, and he understood that Dunedin was lacking in hospital facilities for training students. Classes at a medical school should- be no larger than 120, he said, otherwise it would not be possible to handle the necessary laboratory and pathological work. The standard of medicine in Auckland might well be raised if there was a medical school there, he said.

Yesterday afternoon Dr. Dameshek gave two lectures at Christchurch Hospital.