HOTEL CARGEN

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 139, 13 June 1940, Page 8

HOTEL CARGEN

USE AS NURSES' HOME

The Minister of Health (the Hon. H. T. Armstrong) announced last night that the Hotel Cargen. Auckland, is to be used as a nurses' home. The hotel was offered to the Auckland Hospital Board and the Government last week by Sir Ernest Davis and the Hon. Eliot R. Davis, M.L ;i C, for use.in any way in connection with the nation's war effort. The offer, Mr. Armstrong said, was an extremely generous one, and the Government and people were under a deep debt of gratitude to the two gentlemen.

The Minister stated that the Government, in conjunction with the Auckland Hospital Board, proposed to proceed almost immediately with the erection of new buildings to provide for accommodation for returning sick and wounded soldiers, and to deal with the present, congested position of Auckland Hospital. These buildings consisted of a block of 150 beds, which was to be erected adjacent to the main hospital site, and a further block of 218 beds which was to be erected at the Auckland Infirmary. This already extensive building programme would have had to be added to materially but for the pablic-spirited offer of Sir Ernest and the Hon. Eliot Davis, as this prospective increase in the number of patients, of course, involved a marked increase in the nursing staff.

"The Hotel Cargen will immediately relieve the situation in Auckland so far as the nursing staff is concerned, will allow increased numbers of nurses to be taken in for training, and will ensure that they live'in excellent accommodation, and in the most congenial surroundings," Mr. Armstrong said.

While a decision has not yet been made as to when the hotel will be taken over, it is understood that it will be very shortly.