LETTERS TO THE EDITOR THE MEDICAL SCHOOL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25241, 2 June 1943, Page 3

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

THE MEDICAL SCHOOL

Sir, —In endeavouring to convey that there were inaccuracies in the interview given to your paper by the Minister o£ Education recently, Dr McMillan adduces some figureg from a statistical survey undertaken by the Health Department in 1937, which, he asserts; “ had shown an enormous deficiency in medical personnel, if all citizens were to receive all the medical care they needed.” It may be assumed that the department’s figures for 1937 are correct; but if Dr McMillan, for reasons that suit his case, accepts them as reliable, why does he challenge as misleading the figures given by the same department in 1943 to the Minister, whom he now vainly seeks to discredit as guilty of a naive reply, as allowing himself to be misled, and as making a statement without a full knowledge of the facts? If Dr McMillan has really studied with sense and understanding the statement prepared ' by the dean and staff of the Medical School he must realise that every conceivable contingency has been carefully considered and provided for—increase in the Dominion population, mortality rates in the medical profession itself, lesser average length of service by women doctors; “ exports ” of New Zealand medical grauates to other lands, and imports of outside practitioners. This masterly enlightening exposition covering in retrospect and future scope the years 1900 to 1965 was in possession of the Health Department, which would also have its own sources of reliable fecords and investigation. With all this made*available to the Minister, surely it is the extreme limit of hardihood * for McMillan to attribute first to the dean and the department the issue oi unsound statements and then to the Minister, Mr Mason, who has an analytical and cultured mind, a gullible simplicity in blindly accepting such findings. The final paragraph of Dr McMillan’s letter (May 26) reaches the limit of absurdity. He evidently confuses the official medical register, which always contains many obsolete names with the working register, the names in which are all of members of the medical profession in active practice in some capacity—about 1000 in all. Are we to swallow the implied statement that of these—as has been rumoured of some New Zealand camps—so per cent, are officers and 50 per cent; rank and file—i.e., general practitioners? A glance at any telephone list will satisfy your readers how different is the real position.—l am, etc., Iconoclast.