EMERGENCY HOSPITAL TREATMENT

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 147, 19 December 1944, Page 4

EMERGENCY HOSPITAL TREATMENT

Sir, —I think some publicity should be given to conditions existing in the Wellington Fever Hospital at Trentham. The women's hospital is one very large room, divided into scarletfever and chickenpox wards by a row of six-foot folding screens. The same staff attend to all patients, and I myself saw children holding hands through the screens and convalescent scarlet-fever ones standing alongside the bed of a chickenpox patient. Also, much of the crockery is cracked, and frequently it is'not properly washed, yet it and the cutlery are used indiscriminately by patients in both wards. Complaints by the patients just received the same reply, , "This is an emergency hospital," but it has been for 15 months.

A large proportion of patients entering this, hospital with scarlet fever contract chickenpox there. In ray wife's case this increased her stay by two weeks, and the second complaint took far more out of her than the scarlet fever, which was relatively mild. It ■will probably be said that chickenpox is a minor complaint, but this is obviously not the cage when adult patients are already in a weakened state.

If they are short of staff would it not be better to shorten the stay of patients in hospital by protecting them from other troubles rather than by engaging extra girls? I would ask the chairman of the Hospital Board to answer the following questions through your columns: — (.1) Does his board intend making any attempt to protect patients entering the fever hospital from chickenpox? (2) How many women or girl patients entered the Trentham Hospital, say, in October and November with scarlet fever? (3) How many cases of chickenpox were there in the same period? (4) How many of these contracted the chickenpox in the hospital? In considering the above figures it should be remembered that people who "have! already.had chickenpox before enter-! ing the hospital (say, in childhood) ' are immune.—l am, etc., C. G. GREEN.