ALCOHOLISM PATIENTS

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29909, 24 August 1962, Page 12

ALCOHOLISM PATIENTS

900 A Year In N.Z.

(N.Z. Press Association)

AUCKLAND, Aug. 23. In each of the last three years there had been 900 alcoholism patients admitted to public hospitals in New Zealand, said the Minister of Health (Mr McKay) in Auckland today. He was opening a threeday seminar on alcoholism sponsored by the Health Department. Among the 40 attending are medical practitioners, hospital board administrators Health and Justice department officials, and other workers connected With alchoholism.

Over the same period, said Mr McKay, there had been a steady rise ip the number of patients admitted to the hospitals of the Division of Mental Health.

“The average length of stay for the general hospital patients is 10 days,” he said, “and for the cases treated in the psychiatric hospitals more than six weeks.”

The in-patient treatment of alcoholics made a substantial demand on hospital resources every year.

Mr McKay said that estimates of the number of alcoholics in New Zealand had ranged as high as 25,000. “Until some survey by adequate scientific techniques of social investigation provides an acceptably determined figure for the New Zealand incidence of alcoholism,” he said, “there is bound to be some uncertainty and some room for differences of opinion on this point.” He said there were certainly not less than 10,000 alcoholics in thq country.