SOLDIER PATIENTS

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 11187, 18 April 1922, Page 5

SOLDIER PATIENTS

AN ? HEALTH DEPARTMENT.

MILITARY AUTHORITIES’ ATTITUDE.

(Special to “Times.”) AUCKLAND, April 15. When the matter of the proposed action in' placing returned soldiers at present being medically attended under the .auspices of the Defence Department, under the control of the Department of Public Health, in terms of a recent Press telegram, was referred to Colonel Tracy Inglis, Assistant-Di-rector of Medical Services, -he expressed considerable surprise and remarked that he had received no formal notification to that effect.

Colonel Inglis was of opinion that the action of the Health' Department in taking over King Georg’s Hospital at Rotorua, the Hammer Hospital, and the Pukeora (Waipukurau) Sanatorium, had probably occasioned confusion in the minds of some people. He believed that the Health Department would also assume control at Trentharn at a later date; negotiations were at present in progress. As far as Auckland was concerned, he continued, the Hospital Board had taken over the shelters, and very shortly would assume control of the massage work. This was also being done at Wellington. It was a natural sequence that the civil hospital should take over the work of the military establishments ; this had been done, and was at present being done in all parts of the Dominion. With reference to the numbers of men coming forward for medical treatment as the result of war service and illness, Colonel Inglis stated that the work showed very little signs of diminishing. “We are still going strong,” he said, “and there are very littlo signs of falling off. I cannot understand the message at all, unless it ha? been confused with the work the Health Department has already taken over. , Beyond that I have received no word of any impending change.”