RED CROSS SOCIETY

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 122, 27 May 1925, Page 9

RED CROSS SOCIETY

EXPANSION OF ACTIVITIES

(FROM OUB OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

SYDNEY, 22nd May.

The Red Cross Society of New South' Wales is launching a big campaign with the object of raising funds for the expansion of its activities, by assisting-to combat tuberculosis among civilians. . Of the four hospitals, among other institutions and activities under tho control of the Red Cross i n Sydney, the only one dealing with tuberculosis is that at Bodington, Wentworth Falls, in the Blue Mountains. There thirty returned soldiers are undergoing treatment in an institution that has accommodation for 108 patients. Overhead expenses are out of all proportion to the number of patients, the cost of the thirty men there now being at the rate of £8500 a year. If civilians are admitted seventy more patients could be admitted. The society -now proposes to enter upon peacetime activities, including a big effort to combat tuberculosis among the civil populatioif It is proposed not only to conduct Bodington as a sanatorium for civilians as well as returned soldiers, but also to establish a hospice for advanced T.3>. cases in or near Sydney, and to co-ope-rate with other bodies which are engaged in fighting tuberculosis. The ' Government is backing the movement in a practical form. Few realise the wonderful work.the Red Cross is still doing alon<» voluntary lines in New South Wales. It not only maintains four big hospitals and three junior Red Cross homes, but provides comforts for soldier patients in hospitals outside its control, assists soldiers' families, particularly while tho soldiers are in hospital, and is gradually mobilising a great voluntary first-aid and home-nursing army by training young men and women to 'fill the depleted ranks of the voluntary aid detachments.