The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. THURSDAY, JUNE 17, 1926. THE KEW HOSPITAL

Southland Times, Issue 19898, 17 June 1926, Page 6

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. THURSDAY, JUNE 17, 1926. THE KEW HOSPITAL

A correspondent, whose letter we publish this morning, makes one or two references to the proposal to build a new general hospital at Kew which demand some correction. It is wholly wrong to suggest that the plans for the new hospital are dominated by the “artistic sense” of the board’s architect. A careful examination of the plans reveals their excellence from the viewpoint of hospital management, and of the care of the patients. It was strictly on the utilitarian side that the Department of Public Health, medical superintendents at other hospitals in the country, and finally Dr. McEachern, the Canadian expert who was in the Dominion, expressed their hearty approval of them. They are not lavish, they obviously do not exceed the department's ideas of what a hospital of that size should be, and they will provide for Southland an institution without peer in New Zealand, and offering room for expansion such as no institution of a similar character can boast. It. is also necessary to say that the Southland Hospital Board’s scheme does not provide for any increase in the levy for capital expenditure. For some time the board has been striking an annual levy to collect a fund for this new scheme, and the financial arrangements have been designed to continue those payments without any increase until the district’s share of the outlay is liquidated. This is not propaganda in the sense that the word “propaganda” is usually understood, because even those members of the board who are against proceeding with the scheme at present will agree that the financing does not involve any increase in the annual rate drawn from the district. Naturally people in the rural areas are rather concerned about this point, but a decision to enlarge the hospital at its present site, which has been considered by the board on plans prepared by the architect, will not mean that the district will escape from any impost for the cost of reconstruction and extension. Among the points to which attention should be drawn is that the arguments for and against the proposals have not been properly focussed by the board, and even the members of the Southland Division of the British Medical Association have not said why they object to the board’s proposals. It looks as if the delay that has taken place will open the way for a close scrutiny of the two questions and may lead to work being postponed for a year until the present wave of concern is put behind us, but this will be of no advantage to the ratepayers in the Southland Hospital District if the usual rate is struck, because it will mean that the impost on the ratepayers is not lessened. The discussion has been carried on without any marked display of enthusiasm on the part of the objectors, but undoubtedly the public is mystified because it lacks an authoritative and comprehensive statement of the whole scheme from the board and a lucid exposition of its policy in the past and for the future. If the Southland Hospital Board desires to proceed with this building scheme without having it ventilated by the department it is endangering its hopes by not informing the public in clear terms what it seeks and why it has gone so far with its proposals. That the board is divided is true, but the public has had practically nothing from members of the board to show why they are for or against Kew. This silence is not to the advantage of anybody, except that it serves to show* how dangerous it is for any public body to forget that it must keep the people fully informed about its operations.