Health system ‘crippled’

Press, 25 May 1977, Page 17

Health system ‘crippled’

The New Zealand health system was being crippled because politicians were reluctant to take bold and resourceful steps to bring it up to the standard ot other developed countries, the professor of medicine at the Christchurch Clinical School (Professor D. W. Beaven) said yesterday. Professor Beaven said his recent trip to Australia as visiting professor at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney had convinced him that teaching hospitals in Sydne., were “streets ahead’’ of any similar units in New Zealand. “The whole attitude to health care in New South Wales is based on sensible decision-making by the people who run the teaching hospitals; not as here, where we must await the whims of a bureaucracy which make it impossible for people at the local level to take important decisions,” Professor Beaven said. Unless urgent and practical steps were taken in New Zealand this country would continue to fail behind the other developed countries in the type of health care provided. Professor Beaven said he did not quarrel with the fact that health care was expensive, but this should be viewed realistically. “What are we doing when we spend millions of dollars importing tobacco which we know contributes to health problems. “What is the challenge of our mounting road toll and its link to drunken driving? Tnere is precious little being done to stop the type of drinking that goes on in some of our taverns.”

Measured against other countries New Zealand was not maintaining the level of health care it did 16 years ago, Professor Beaven said. “For example in 1948 New Zealand had the third best system of child-health care in the world but in 1973 we had droppeo to sixteenth place. Death from hypertensive heart disease increased between 1971 and 1973, and this is a disease which is preventable in a good health system. “There have been upward trends in deaths by peptic ulcers; and alcoholism as a cause of death has risen from 25.5 per million in 1969 and now is almost doubled at 50 per million of the population. “Also there has been an increase in lung cancer. Are these facts those you expect from a good health care system?” Professor Beaven said there was now clear evidence of gross overconsumption of food in New Zealand. “In this country we

have chomped our way to top place in the eating stakes of the world consuming nearly twice the world average in calories. “As a result more than 30 per cent of our younger people moving ofrward into adult life will be crippled by the consequence — unacceptable obesity.” If politicians pushed for more realistic attitudes to health in the community then New Zealand could look forward to a better ■health system. “It would be wiser for politicians to place higher taxes on tabacco and uncivilised drinking, and to increase the money available for health. Also more finance could then be spent on health education in schools and in the community.” A change in the direction of thinking by politicans in reference to health planning was a matter of urgency, Professor Beaven said. “If all our decisions on health care for this district, for example, were taken in Christchurch we would get things sorted out quickly. At present there is no way the North Canterbury Hospital Board can make direct, real decisions on health care; and so here we are hampered in preventive medicine from making proper contact with people like general practitioners and the medical officer of health. So often the hospital board is forced to work in the dark. “People in our hospitals in Christchurch are not getting the type of care to which they should be entitled because we are screwed down for finance by an over-administered central system which allows for little real local decision-making,” Professor Beaven said.