IRISH HOSPITALS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 257, 27 September 1935, Page 10

IRISH HOSPITALS.

MILLIONS FROM SWEEPSTAKE. Sir Edward Coey Bigger, chairman of the Irish Eree State Public Health Council, and a Senator, who furnished a special report on the physical welfare of mothers and children in Ireland for the Carnegie Trust, said in an interview in Sydney recently, on his way to the B.M.A. Congress in Melbourne, that there had been a remarkable improvement in the public health of the Irish people in recent years. This was mainly due to the fact that in the Irish Free State public health was now a matter of national concern. The old boards of guardians and “poor houses” had been abolished. A system of public health had been established which gave assistance to persons unable to pay for ordinary medical attention without having the stigma of pauperism attached to it. Half the cost of this treatment was defrayed by the Government, and half by the local councils, which included in their annual estimates a sum for public health in the same way as the cost of maintaining roads and other necessary works. There were County Boards of Health which worked in conjunction with the Government Health Council. “The hospitals throughout the Irish Free State have been improved in equipment and accommodation in recent years, and all their indebtedness wiped out,” added Dr. Bigger. “This has been made possible by the grants from the Irish Sweepstake, the profits of which are ear-marked for hospitals and public health. There is now over £2,000,000 in hand in that fund for the enlargement and improvement. of all the leading hospitals in the Irish Free State. The money is being held in trust whilst a scheme for the co-ordin-ation of the Irish hospital system is being considered. It is hoped that there will be a general scheme of co-opera-tion between the main hospitals of the Irish Free State which will prevent overlapping and secure the most effective and economical hospital treatment. It is hoped to make the Irish hospitals the best-managed, best equipped and most efficient in the world. Hus hospital improvement is not conhned to the Irish Free State only, but similar schemes are being perfected under the Ulster Parliament for Northern Ireland. The Royal Victoria Hospital Belfast, one of the best equipped of modern hospitals, has been considerably enlarged, and a new pathological department added. A new hospital has been erected in Belfast, where the most up-to-date methods will be adopted for maternal cases.”