The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND TUESDAY, MAY 28, 1920 DEFYING HEALTH LAWS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 674, 28 May 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND TUESDAY, MAY 28, 1920 DEFYING HEALTH LAWS

ONE of the lamentable features of public healing institutions and their administration in Auckland is the lack of an adequate hospital for the safe treatment of infectious diseases. The existing accommodation is both a makeshift and a menace. It does not provide essential isolation and, moreover, it fails to afford reasonable security to the unfortunate patients who must accept treatment in admittedly dangerous conditions. All that is not a fanciful elaboration of a disgraceful position. It is a temperate epitome of acknowledged and confessed facts. In open discussion so that an apathetic community might know its plight in the event of a serious epidemic of infectious disease, medical officers and members of the Hospital Board have stated definitely that there have been cases of cross-infection m the overcrowded fever wards, and also that nurses from the mam hospital had spread infection. Now, what does the board propose to do in order to make things better? It appears determined to do something that is worse. The disgrace in not having an efficient fever hospital for the largest, but not necessarily the greatest and wisest, city m the Dominion is to be replaced by the scandal of erecting a large hospital for the treatment of infectious diseases near the centre oi a populous community. Though the board is anything but sure about the wisdom of its expensive policy, it persists in its folly, apparently callously defiant of all the expert rules that everywhere, except in Auckland, determine the locality of feverhospitals and govern their maintenance, administration and public service in safe, isolation. . A site for a large block of fever wards lias Been prepared m the hospital grounds on the upper slope of the Domain. Money has been spent on excavations and foundational work. Tentative plans of the projected building have been approved by the boaid and the Health Department, but full authority to build has not yet been obtained from the Government which is interested in the expenditure involved and presumably should be concerned also with the interests of the community. Hitherto the board has tried to place on the Government the onus of responsibility for Auckland’s notorious lack of a proper fever hospital. There has been talk of not allowing the State Administration “to sidestep” any longer the urgency of the question. It is probable that the Minister of Health and his chief departmental advisers will take a very different view of the city’s needs and the hoard s obdurate policy in going on with a right project at the wrong place. Unless health and medical authorities all the world over outside Auckland have changed their opinion and altered their wisdom which admittedly is not always infallible, any hospital for the reception and treatment of patients suffering from infectious diseases should be beyond the town which it serves, but with good facilities for access. Auckland, it may be observed, has become almost famous for its excellent concrete highways to a delightful countryside within sight of the city. Moreover, the best experts say that every fever hospital should have ample grounds around it and should, if practicable at all, be built in a series of one-storeyed pavilions connected with each other by corridors open to the air. Do the plans of the Auckland Hospital Board provide for anything like that ideal system? Far from it. Indeed, even its plans are not definite. The board seesaws up and down from a building with 61 beds at a total cost of £33,500 and a four-storeyed block with 128 beds, involving an expenditure of £52,000. And, so far, no provision has been made for detached accommodation for nurses. It is said, too, that even a great deal of the food for prospective patients will have to be transported from the main hospital kitchen to the new fever hospital which, like a flat, is to be equipped with poky kitchenettes.

So, at its best, the hoard’s policy is still nothing better than a pretentious makeshift, and possessing all the danger cf infection being spread by roving nurses. Why go on with a scheme that must begin inadequately and, as to locality, is directly and inexcusably opposed to all the best laws governing fever hospitals?