CONSUMPTIVE SANATORIA.

Evening Star, Issue 18022, 17 July 1922, Page 4

CONSUMPTIVE SANATORIA.

The idea of the co-operative control of consumption sanatoria has had a galloping progress in tho last few weeks. A year or so ago it was anything but an easy task for tho Health Department to persuade half a dozen of the smaller hospital boards in the South Island which have no such institution at the present time to combine for tho purpose of establishing and maintaining on© in Otago Central. Tho scheme was no sooner agreed upon, and definite arrangements made to give effect to it, at the conference held recently in Tlmaru than it began to expand. A new suggestion was made by Dr Valintino that the project might’ bo placed on a much I hotter footing if the Otago Board should become a party to it. Such glowing advantages were described by the DirectorGeneral of Health as involved in this extension of his plan as to mako it most surprising that he had never thought of it before. The Otago Board has two institutions now for consumptives, but if one of those was scrapped and the other—at Wakari—made subsidiary to tho Central sanatorium, tho advantages for tho general plan of having a sorting-out place for patients and greater opportunity for classification would bo very real. Now it has been suggested by an Otago member at the conference of hospital board delegates which has just been held in Wellington that the scheme might ha extended further to take in tho North Canterbury Board. That board has a great and unusually successful institution for consumptives on tho Cashmere Hills, near Christchurch, but some of them might be helped to recover more quickly if a short spell in the Central were made possible for them, and since change can be good for health apart from the qualities of a climate it is possible that some Central patients might be benefited by a brief transfer to Christchurch. And since pooling of consumptives, as of produce, promises to become the rage, Dr Valintino would go further still. Ho is willing — more than willing, we can imagine, in these days of attenuated State finances — to hand over the two Government institutions in tho North Island to either by the combined hospital boards of that island or by the combined boards of tho whole of New Zealand. It would be too much to expect, probably, that the North Island boards will be eager to take them over. Not unnaturally they may think that they arc on a better. wicket at tho present time, with complete provision made for their consumptives without responsibility on their part, and at tho cost of the taxpayers of the whole dominion. Dr Valintino may need all his eloquence to convert them to his plan.

Apart from this aspect, there are difficulties in the scheme of joint control which cannot be ignored. In the North Island there are. twenty-four hospital districts and in the South Island seventeen. If all these are to be served by four consumptive sanatoria the natural system of control would he nationalisation. We can imagine that a particular board might manage one sanatorium better than the Government, but the idea of seventeen or forty-one boards managing anything that required continuous management and involving heavy charges on contributing bodies by a joint committee demands some faith in the special genius of hospital local authorities to agree. together. A fine zeal for agreement has been shown in the last few months, but the zeal is as new as it is pleasing. In actual practice we must feel doubtful whether the opportunity of transferring patients from one distant institution to another would be often availed of. That would bo too expensive. The -Otago Board might come into the scheme, and find that it was required to pay more for patients it should send to the Central sanatorium than it costs now to maintain them in its own institutions. On the other hand, it would bo less subject to suffering the charge of patients who have no real claim to belong to its district at all. The scheme of joint control will need to bo very carefully considered by boards that have their own sanatoria at the present time, though, with the possibility of working Wakari in conjunction with Waipiata, it might have more advantages for Otago than for North Canterbury. Dr Yalinline’s estimate of £BO,OOO ns tho eventual cost of buildings at Waipiata should bo capable of a largo reduction. The theory has long been, as wo understand it, that such buildings should he formed of the lightest materials that are consistent with a reasonable permanency, since the treatment or consumption is still liable to change, and the buildings that are an urgent need to-day may be found to bo not required, or to have been erected in other than tho best location, with advance of knowledge. Bub tho zeal of hospital boards throughout, this island to make complete provision for consumptives is most cheering.