The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. “LUCEO NON URO.” FRIDAY, MARCH 19, 1937. The New Hospital

Southland Times, Issue 23152, 19 March 1937, Page 4

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. “LUCEO NON URO.” FRIDAY, MARCH 19, 1937. The New Hospital

We publish this morning a special supplement designed to put before our readers the facts, historical and financial, which have led to the building of the new Southland hospital. Some of these facts are already widely known, and need no emphasis here. But there are others, concerned more especially with the devotion of individuals to a humanitarian ideal, which at this time it is only proper to mention. And first it should be said that the Southland Hospital Board can look upon the opening ceremony that is to be performed tomorrow by the Minister for Health as the end, not only of a building operation of some magnitude, but of a special task that has made a heavy claim on the thought and energies of its members in a period of more than 20 years. In that time the Hospital Board has changed its personnel, but the veterans in local politics and the newest members have found themselves sharing a corporate mission that transcended all personal and immediate aims. There is one man, however, whose view of the task must have become personal in a special sense. Mr T. Pryde was secretary when the board first became the governing authority, and he is still carrying out his duties in that position. To a certain extent his life’s work has become identified with the preparation for a new hospital, and although the building has claimed the effort of an increasing number of men it is he who has remained closest to its problems. At no time could the task have been less than weighty. The discussions and arguments of many board meetings pass quickly cut of human memory, but for Mr Pryde and those who have been associated with him they will be preserved in the new building at Kew like an extra colouring in the brickwork or an overtone among the echoes in the corridors. A hospital costing roughly £150,000 cannot be built without delays and difficulty and a need to overcome obstacles that cannot be provided for in the specifications. There is an article in the supplement dealing with the finance of the undertaking which deserves special mention. Of the original loan of £50,000, borrowed from the Public Trust Office, there is now only £16,700 to be repaid, and Mr Pryde has stated that the debt should be finally liquidated in about ten years. Whe’n it was found that the loan money -would be inadequate, the board decided to increase the hospital levy rate, a proposal which received the sanction of the various contributory local authorities. Government subsidies, a citizen’s gift and the accumulation of interest provided the balance of the building fund, so that careful management has made it possible for the board to put up a modern hospital and at the same time to show a balance-sheet with which it has every reason to be satisfied. Further expenditure, according to Mr Pryde, is necessary; but in its main outline the work has been accomplished, and it rests on a foundation that should be able to support the proper development of the hospital as an essential service to the people of Southland. This point is worth stressing. A hospital ‘ is not merely a fine new building with wards and operating theatres equipped to deal with an increasing number of patients: it is most of all a rallying centre for the community in its resistance to disease; and its value will be greatest when most of its beds are unoccupied. The new hospital was first suggested by Dr Valentine in 1917, a year when physical suffering was receiving a grim emphasis on the battlefields of Europe. Twenty years is a long time in the life of an individual, and most of us have seen far-reaching changes since then. The war gave an impetus to science which has carried it towards new discoveries, not least of all in medicine and surgery; and it is the task of those who care for the sick to see that scientific gains are made use of, as far as is practicable, in their immediate environment. This can be done only with the fullest support from those who are administering the public funds. A hospital can be planned twenty years ahead, but disease strikes quickly, and there must be no delays where equipment is needed in a struggle that never ceases. If anything more is to be said at a time like this it -should take the form of a reminder that health does not dwell in hospitals, to be administered there in spoonfuls of medicine. New Zealand has every reason to be proud of her hospitals and of those who run them; but there is less cause for satisfaction in the thought that, no matter how big and plentiful they may be, they can scarcely cope with the increasing numbers of patients. Now that the Government is interesting itself in the physical training of the country’s youth there is reason to hope that this sort of thing will be replaced

by a new and nation-wide conception of health as a precious possession to be cared for in the daily life of the individual. But such hopes presuppose an undisturbed future, and are in danger of being utopian. In the meantime our hospitals are a vital need, and the people of Southland have cause to be thankful that an institution worthy of their province now stands completed at Kew.