MAORIS' HOSPITAL FEES

Northern Advocate, 19 August 1929, Page 6

MAORIS' HOSPITAL FEES

STATE AID WANTED,

(Per Press Association.—Copyright.)

DAiRGAVILLEij This Day.

A conference is to be held in HamJilton on August 26. to. discuss the treatment of natives in public hospitals. During the past two years it has cost the Kaipara Hospital Board £766 to keep natives in. its institutions, in addition to which it has paid the travelling expenses of the district nurse, totalling £360 for two years. The secretary of the board, Mr T. C. French, said that during seven or eight years he did not think the district nurses had collected 30s. The natives were paying neither rates nor fees.

Mr W. Collins (Maungaturoto) said the natives were wt'rth saving. They wanted someone to help carry their burden. He suggested that the Government should arrange for the natives in the more wealthy districts to set aside certain land endowments to provide funds for the treatment of their sick.

The chairman, Mr J, H. McCarroll, said the Hospital Boards* Association already had taken up the question with the Government. The natives held valuable lands and recently they had been granted additional rights at Rotorua and Omapere Lake. He agreed that the natives were worth saving, to him it seemed most unfair that the burden should fall on ten or eleven boards, whose responsibility it was. The chairman and. the secretary were authorised to attend the conference.