MR MASLIN AND HOSPITAL SEPARATION.

Evening Star, Issue 18139, 1 December 1922, Page 7

MR MASLIN AND HOSPITAL SEPARATION.

TO TUB EDITOR. Sir,—A political candidate is largely responsible for vagaries and general misropresentatkmo of the members of his committees. I have been honored by the attention some of these gentlemen have been paying me at my public meetings, and also in the Press, indicating that they can see the red light, and are trying to remove tho danger. They leave the Labor candidate alone and concentrate all their attentions upon myself.- I should not mind if they adhered to facts or even tho semblance of truth, but when they rely on wretched taradiddles to try to bolster up their position I must protest. Your correspondent signing himself Taxed” writes that it is a loot that a. few short months ago I was a very prominent member of the South Otago Hospital movement. I may inform him I haVo lived in Anderson Bay for the last two end ahalf years, during which period I have had nothing to do with any hospital matters. I am sorry this poor fallow is suffering from .sa'ch mental weakness os to seem to remember me as one of a deputation which went to Wellington and waited on the Government in connection with the matter. This is an absolute fiction, invented for tho purpose of assisting a political opponent at tho present, election. To save further correspondence andl questions being put to me -at. my mootings, I ask you to publish 'the following facts: —While I was. living at Romanapa, looking after my eon’s farm during his nlbsenco at tho war, my wife was taken dangerously dll, and I was advised that I must remove her to some place where she would have proper attention. I tried at Balclutha and Milton, and found that in these towns, being part of tho Dunedin Hospital district, there was neither a private nor public' hospital where her case ‘could be attended to, and at last I got a private person to take her in and care for her under a doctor’s direction. I then wrote to the local papers drawing attention to tho culpable neglect, by the Dunedin Hospital authorities of these important" centres of population. 1 contrasted tho conditions prevailing in Otago with those in Canterbury. In Christchurch we have a large city hospital, up to date iu every respect. Fifty miles south you have the Ashburton County Hospital, an institution in which the most difficult major operations are performed. Again, fifty miles .south., and you have the South Canterbury Board, with up-to-date institutions and an efficient surgical and nursing staff. Again, thirty miles south, and you have the Waimate Hospital, where all surgical cases can bo treated. Again, another thirty miles, .and we have the W-aitaki HosIMtal. Then seventy miles south and we ■have the Dunedin Hospital. Again, going south, passing Milton and Balclutha right on to Gore, a distance of 100 miles, and we come to the Gore Hospital in Southland. With the exception of a small receiving hospital at Kaitangata, with a mining population of 1,762, no other provision existed for treating urgent cases. My letter led to the County Council taking action to sec that something was done, which finally 'resulted in tho separation bif South Otago from the Dunedin district. Long before this took place I was living in Anderson Bay, and took no part, in tho final separation.—l aim, etc., December 1. W. S. Alaslin.