DEMOCRACY AND HEALTH

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 24, 29 January 1932, Page 6

DEMOCRACY AND HEALTH

Transport facilities in New Zealand have been greatly improved in the last twenty years. Yet our system ot local government is based on the New Zealand that we knew thirty or more years ago. The Government has proposed a Commission to investigate this and advise upon better methods, and Dr. Campbell Begg has submitted to fiie Wellington Hospital Board a scheme for drastic changes m that branch of local government which is concerned -with health and hospitals. We do not think that Dr. Begg's statement of the case for reform can be questioned. There are far too many hospital districts in New Zealand. In former days this was probably .excusable because of the difficulty in communication. Each small centre had to be self-contained because cases could not be transferred long distances. Now good roads, where there are not railways, largely remove;this difficulty; and in time we' may have regular airambulance services. There is every argument, therefore, in favour of coordination of hospital facilities, and this can best be brought about by a rearrangement of districts. Efficiency would not be lowered by this reorganisation. Rather, it would be raised, for the units would be larger and better able to provide the service needed. Cost would certainly be reduced.

; How is Uiis to be effected? We know from experience how difficult it is- to overcome * local objections which bar the way even to less ambitious amalgamations. The small town or district fears that it is losing something,r though it is promised a better : service. But these local obstacles should not be viewed as insuperable. /Nowhere are there stronger protests against heavy rates than in the country districts. The rates, arjß heavy because the country has ihsiste'd on regaining the luxhry (if one may call it so) of Inefficiency. fyy *He country must consider whether it will continue to insist on so many local boards or whether it will rid itself of some of the rate burden by adopting a system in keep-

ing with the times. The country will! not lose anything of real value. It will gain, and at a lower cost. Dr. Begg states that it would not be too much to hope that the average rate for hospital purposes would fall in a year or two to 0.176 in the pound as against 0.274 for 1929-30. Surely this substantial gain is worth the sacrifice of the shadowy benefits of over-localised government. The control would still be essentially democratic, but it would be sensible democracy, empowering a central authority to take the steps which could not otherwise be taken for the general good. . N :