MEDICAL SERVICE

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 35, 11 February 1931, Page 11

MEDICAL SERVICE

WORK AT FIRST-AID STATIONS

(By "The Post's" Special Reporter.) NAPIER, • This Day. , Doctors and nurses who rendered in- , valuable servico during the hectic days ■; following the disaster have now estab- | lished a first-class hospital at the '; Napier Park racecourse, capable of re- , ceiving fifty or sixty patients. The . old hospital on Scinde Island is totally i ruined, and a new wooden building will have to be built on some other : site. ■ The temporary hospital at the racecourse will serve for several weeks. If the weather remains fine, every- } thing will work smoothly, but in the ' event of rain" there is a possibility of a flood. To prevent this, a party of ■'■ Public Works men is busy erecting stopbanks round tlie tents. Several of the doctors who assisted;on the day of the shake are still on duty, but the majority have been able to take a few days' leave. , . Some indication of the magnitude of : the task that faced the hospital authorities was given to-day by one of the doctors on duty at the racecourse. Soon after the main shake had subsided; he said, hundreds of injured people started to arrive at the hospital on Seinde Island, which, of course, was nothing but a mass of ruins. Beds and eurgi* cal apparatus were dragged out of the tottering buildings, arid set up in the Botanical Gardens adjoining the hospital. Those who were badly wounded were attended to on the! operating table, but -the great majority, suffering from bad cuts, were given anaesthetics as they lay on .their beds. OTHER ARRANGEMENTS. Other first aid centres were established at Nelson Park and M( Lean Park/ and at a house at Awatoto. As soon as sufficient transport could be arranged patients from these centres were placed in motor-vans and taken to the racecourse, which was chosen as a hospital site owing to its sanltai-y conveniences. Sailors from H.M.S. Veronica soon had hot soup and tea ready for the patients, and by nightfall some two dozen tents had been erected in front of the grandstand. ThTee operating tables were kept going, and the remaining doctors were attending to the large number of minor injuries. Some of the patients were' so badly bruised that it was impossible to tell what was the matter with them. They were placed in wards in the grandstand buildings, but in many cases their nervous condition was such that they nearly went mad when they were taken inside a door. THE -EVACUATION'S. Patients were evacuated on the Tuesday night to Waipukurau, Daimevirke, and Palmerston North, but owing to the shortage of ambulances they had to be sent away in lorries and motor-cars. A field hospital frppi the Defence Department at Wellington arrived on Wednes-. day, and the injured were taken from the wards in the three wooden buildings and put under canvas. A shortage of suitable conveyances retarded the work of evacuation, but at the end of the day only fifty patients- were left. Military men from Treutham worked solidly all day carrying the patients to the waiting motor vehicles. By this time the organisation, of the hospital was setting down, and the workers were enabled to get a little rest. > On Thurs-. day more patients were evacuated, so that to-day there are less than thirty in hospital. . \.. ..'. '■ ' REMARKABLY LOW DEATH LIST. One of the most remarkable features of the hospital work was that only two patients died in hospital as a result of injuries received during the earthquake. All patients with the slightest cuts were injected with anti-tetanus serum, and there was not a single case of lockjaw. Maternity cases from the M'Hardy Home were taken to the racecourse hospital, where a special ward was set aside. ■' ■' An isolation ward has now been established, and is dealing. with all the infectious eases from the surrounding district. So far there are only two —a case of diphtheria and one of ch^ckenpox. Mild outbreaks of diarrhoea have occurred in the main camps, but otherwise there has been very little illness of any description.