HEALTH PREVENTION

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 70, 24 March 1931, Page 5

HEALTH PREVENTION

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—l have read Sir Apirana Ngata's statement regarding our social services with no very great wonder. There is one branch of this subject which is fast becoming a colossal burden to the countryThat is our hospital population. For eight years I have endeavoured to call a halt to the policy of drift in this grave problem. Let us see what has taken place during recent years. In 1919-23 the public hospital population was on the average 46,000, or 357 per 10,000 population. Each year this total has bounded up until in 1029. the huge total of 83,812, or 569 per 10,000 population, was reached. In 1926 hospital treatment took 200,000 weeks; 1928, 260,000 weeks; and 1929, 270,000 weeks. Not only that, but the average stay per patient has lengthened from 21 days In 1926 to 22% in 1928, and in 1929 to 23 days. The nominal cost of our public hospitals per year is about £1,100,000. But the actual cost in time would, if worked out, stagger the biggest financiers in the country. Yet in all the reckonings of our economists we never see this problem adequately tackled and estimated. It occupies no place whatever in any-of our "economy" schemes. *■ And undoubtedly there is only one adequate economy, and that is prevention by the institution of a nation-wide health education campaign. In 1922, standing as a candidate for Christchurch South, I advocated a coun-try-wide system of physical culture education. Because I could see then' .that a policy of drift in public, health would lead eventually to a most intolerable burden upon the community. And now here we are with the burden loaded heavily upon us all. Here let it be stated that the figures quoted are only for public hospital inpatients. They do not include hospitals under private or, religious control.. The public hospitals are 139, but the others may be legion for all I know. Any scheme instituted has only been a mere scratching over the surface of the problem, and so has led inevitably to a terrible harvest in economic waste and physical weakness. Building hospitals is only an invitation to' disease, for the more we build the more we will have to build. The only way to deal with the situation is in, the humanist motto: Cure by prevention. Prevent by education, -lam, etc., ~ R _ M ; THOMSON . Auckland, 19th'' March. P.S.—This problem is now increasing at the rate of 7 per cent, per annum._ All these reckonings are from the lear Book. -R.M.T. '