DOMINION’S HEALTH

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19099, 21 August 1936, Page 4

DOMINION’S HEALTH

NATIONAL SERVICE URGED LACK OF ORGANISATION ONLY GUERILLA WARFARE ( Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, this day. With new blood in Parliament, new methods are being utilised to make debating points. The House of Representatives lust night witnessed the spectacle of a member producing a large diagram and giving a lecture on preventive medicine and the advantages of nationalising medical, nursing, and dental services.

Dr. D. G. McMillan (Lab., Dunedin West) raised these matters, temporarily stopping his remarks to fix lirmh to the front of his bench the diagram illustrating various phases of the subject. He pictured doctors, dentists, and nurses waiting at the telephone foi calls, but their services were not fully availed of through lack of proper organisation and economic handicaps.

As an indication of the enormous cost to the community of disease, much of which he contended was preventable, Dr. McMillan stated that 5 per cent of New Zealand’s population received treatment as in-patients in our hospitals annually, this representing a loss of 1,500,000 working days. The Dominion’s productive capacity was, in his opinion, reduced by 30 per cent through disease, and there was only guerilla warfare being conducted against it. Stunt health campaigns were useless, and doctors could not afford sufficient time to give attention to preventive work. TIHBUTE TO DOCTORS They did not care to call attention to the housing conditions which caused disease among their patients. The Dominion had only half the number of doctors it needed, for the proportion of one to every 1000 inhabitants was insufficient, lie advocated the national organisation of all health services, which would enable preventive action to be taken, as well as attention to actual disease.

Mr. S. G. Holland (Nat., Christchurch North), who followed from the Opposition benches, expressed a hope that the Government would take heed of those who would right the wrongs of which Dr. McMillan had spoken.

The lion. P. Fraser: And of the taxation necessary to put it into force ?

Air. Holland: 1 thought the member spoiled a good speech by referring to where tln* money was to come from, because I make bold to say that not a man in the House would question ii where the health and lives of the people are at stake. Mr. .1. A. Lee (Lab., Grey Lynn): Von are an infant. Look at 11)32.

Air. Holland added that although he must pay a tribute to the previous member, he considered him to be most ungenerous in saying that doctors ceased to be social workers and had become business men.

Air. AlcAlillaii: 1 said many of them. Air. Holland declared that lie did not think that was true, ns anyone who had been interested in the problems of the slum would testify, while the doctors came through the inIluenza. epidemic with tlyiug colours, looking after the poor in a,way which did them credit.