The Press THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1966 Medical Research

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31153, 1 September 1966, Page 14

The Press THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1966 Medical Research

The Hospitals Amendment Bill introduced in Parliament this session gives the Government unmistakable authority to encourage research and teaching in hospitals. The information acquired by Miss M. B. Howard, M.P., which led her to suggest in the House that attempts were being made to close the medical unit at the Princess Margaret Hospital must have been sadly astray: for the purpose of the bill and subsequent inquiries suport a very different conclusion. Like other research and teaching units at Wellington and Auckland hospitals, the Princess Margaret unit has been notably successful. Research and teaching in hospitals have not always had the enthusiastic support of the Health Department. At first they fitted rather awkwardly into the departmental concept of hospital organisation. Now, surely, they have won a permanent place. The teaching facilities have proved their worth in giving final-year clinical training to students from the University of Otago Medical School; and research opportunities are necessary to retain distinguished students in the districts fortunate enough to have these units.

Before the Auckland Medical School graduates its first students in 1973, the number of students seeking final-year training in Wellington and Christchurch will increase. Auckland hospital staff will become fully engaged with students from the Auckland school. As extensions of the Otago school the units may even be enlarged to teach surgery, obstetrics, and gynaecology. When he studied medical research in New Zealand in 1963, Sir Harold Himsworth, secretary of the British Medical Research Council, noted with apparent surprise the “ high quality ” of research in places outside the Otago Medical School. He also observed the lack of adequate financial support for research. He foresaw that the clinical facilities at Christchurch for finalyear students would ensure the medical unit’s continuing as an active research and teaching centre. He recommended that grants to the Medical Research Council should be increased rapidly to £500,000 by 1967 and raised by 20 per cent in each of the succeeding three years.

In line with his recommendation, the Medical Research Council was reconstituted this year and the Director-General of Health is no longer automatically chairman of the council. The Government has not accepted Sir Harold Himsworth’s challenge to spend much more liberally on research. Since 1951, when the Medical Research Council was established, the Parliamentary vote for the council has increased from £32,000 to £165,000. Voluntary research foundations have given valuable assistance since their establishment at Auckland, Palmerston North, Wellington, and Christchurch. In spite of this increased aid, financial support for research bears little relationship to the cost of pharmaceutical

benefits, which has risen from £2 million in 1951 to more than £9 million, or to the hospital vote which, since last year, has been increased by £3.4 million. Doctors who are better trained, inducements for them to remain in New Zealand, and research which produces new knowledge and improved methods of treatment —all, surely, must help to keep these soaring bills of costs within reasonable bounds.