SOLEMN NOTE

Taranaki Daily News, 19 January 1935, Page 6

SOLEMN NOTE

EX-CHAIRMAN’S WARNING. STRATFORD HOSPITAL SECURITY. A note of warning among many expressions of satisfaction at the position of the Stratford hospital was sounded by Mr. J. McAllister, a former chairman of the Stratford Hospital Board, in an address at a presentation to Dr. D. Steven, retiring superintendent, yesterday. “This Stratford hospital has been established and carried on on sufferance from the Health Department,” he declared. “The department has stood for large institutions and has, discouraged hospitals of this size. Efficiency and good management has kept it going, but it would be well for future boards this in mind.”

He had been eight years a board member and five years chairman, said Mr. McAllister, and he was naturally very much interested in the hospital. “Had the conditions when the hospital was founded been the same as they are now,” he said, “we would never have had a hospital at Stratford.” Conditions of transport were among the chief changes that made the difference. It might be considered that the Government had too much money invested in the hospital to abolish it, but he assured his audience that not far from the hospital itself there had existed a Government work in which there was even more money sunk than in the hospital, and it had been scrapped for reasons of economy.