Queue for admission for drag treatment

Press, 10 November 1988, Page 4

Queue for admission for drag treatment

More than 300 people with alcohol and drug problems are waiting for admission to Queen Mary Hospital in Hanmer Springs. The Canterbury Hospital Board health services committee was told yesterday that 327 people were on the waiting list for treatment programmes at the hospital. A board member, Mrs Caroline Cartwright, said this was the highest number ever on the waiting list. The medical superintendent of Queen Mary Hospital, Dr Robert Crawford, said yesterday that the routine waiting time was two to three months. “Some people who have

particular conditions that make it important to get them in quickly, we would try and get them a cancellation.” The big waiting list was a reflection of the polydrug (including alcohol) epidemic that was not only New Zea-land-wide but world-wide, said Dr Crawford. "It is part of the disease of affluence and the liberalisation of alcohol and the fashion for polydrug abuse.” Queen Mary Hospital, which has 115 beds, takes patients from throughout New Zealand. Only 18 per cent come from the Canterbury region, said Dr Crawford. The Canterbury Hospital Board is responsible for funding the hos-

pital. A possible solution to the waiting list problem was shortening the treatment programmes, said Dr Crawford. Patients were usually admitted for eight weeks and if this was reduced more patients could be treated, he said. “At the same time we can’t burn out the staff — it is delicate and emotional work and we can’t treat staff as machines.” Dr Crawford said that keeping the sale of liquor provisions as they were, rather than liberalising the laws as proposed in the Sale of Liquor Bill, would help prevent more problems with alcohol abuse.