N.Z. Health Service Faces Serious Problems

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30856, 15 September 1965, Page 1

N.Z. Health Service Faces Serious Problems

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, September 14. The Director-General of Health (Dr. D. P. Kennedy) told graduates of the Auckland School of Nursing tonight that the New Zealand health service budget was running at approximntelv £75 million a vear.

That was between 15 and 16 per cent of Government expenditure and about 36,000 people were employed in the national health services.

Dr. Kennedy said the salary and wages bill came to £3O million a year and the capital works programme for hospitals was about £6O million. The future of nursing and medicine had never been more exciting, as the professions were constantly faced with new knowledge and more sophisticated investigations which kept enlarging reservoirs of knowledge. Even in a relatively advanced country like New Zealand there were still critical problems ahead which would have to be met.

The problem of this day and generation, he said, could be divided into four general, but interwoven areas: the health of pregnant women; environmental hazards; the provision of medical care; and major chronic diseases of adults.

“Clear targets can be set for improvement in fields like our infant mortality rate,” he said.

“In spite of the very high level of achievement we have attained we still find that Sweden, the Netherlands and Norway have a slight edge on our European infant mortality rate and, although our Maori infant mortality rate has dropped to the lowest figure ever yet recorded at 30 per 1000, it is still too far above that of our European infant mortality figure.” NEW PROBLEMS

As far as environment was concerned there were not only the traditional problems but also new problems of the control of pesticides, of air pollution, radiation protection and preservation" of rivers, beaches and lakes by the prevention of water pollution. Dr. Kennedy said that to bring New Zealand’s drinking water up to internationally accepted standards would require the expenditure of about £3O million in capital—fluoridation not included.

To bring sewage disposal and treatment up to acceptable standards a further £3O million in capital expenditure could be involved.

These were only some of the problems ahead, which would be accentuated by a doubling of the population in the next 25 years.

Chronic diseases of adults was both a challenge and an indication of the progress that had been made, he said. Not long ago a major concern would have been the control of communicable disease.

Now it was the prevention and amelioration of heart disease, high blood pressure, malignant disease and the like which were a major preoccupation. Dr. Kennedy said that as Government expenditure on health services increased, the community would demand a better accounting for all the expenditure. “This is undoubtedly de-

sirable, because anything that is intrinsically big can, unless it is carefully controlled, become intrinsically inefficient,” he said. Some thought of this as the nuclear age, others thought of it as the space age, but those in the national health services might well regard it as the age of accountability, he said.