MAUNGAKAWA SANATORIUM

Waikato Independent, Volume V, Issue 326, 19 January 1907, Page 5

MAUNGAKAWA SANATORIUM

RECOVERIES 20 TO 21 PER CENT. During the year just closed the Government Sanatorium for Consumptives at Maungakavva, has been kept full to its utmost capacity, averaging 60 patients. The Chief Health Officer (Dr Mason) told a New Zealand Times reporter that the average of recoveries was something over 20 per cent., nearly 21 per cent., which average compares very favourably with that of institutions in the older countries. PREVENTING THE SPREAD OF DISEASE. “ While twenty per cent, of recoveries is well worth working for, the outstanding value is not so much the curation of the lame, as the spreading of the gospel of fresh air and cleanliness and all that a more natural manner of life spells. It is the prevention of the spread of the disease that we must look to for interest on the capital expended. It would be cruel to suggest that these poor souls should not be looked after, but the greatest reward will come from the instruction in healthy practices which these people will get from a stay in a sanatorium. Residence in a well-conducted Institution will cause a man (or a woman) to realise to the full the danger to other people that lies in what he coughs up, and the necessity of destruction of the sputum in order to prevent the bacilli from causing illness in other people. You could multiply these institutions, and, unless you accommodated every person affected, a very few left outside could spread the disease by non-attention to the destruction of sputum, which, after all, is th,e main thing.” CASES NOT SELECTED. One point that has to be borne in mind,” says Dr. Mason, “is that we are not able to select cases as most private institutions in the Old Land do. We have had to take many cases which are, in our opinion, far advanced. At present we have patients from all parts of the colony ; but we hope that, as the various hospital boards take up the work of consumptives’ sanatoria, there will be less pressure upon the main institution. The other day I had a man in here who left the sanotcrium a year ago, and who had since been working on the Main Trunk line; he was not able to work before. We encourage discharged patients, wherever they are, to call on the district health officers, who examine such callers and put on record their condition at the time of examination, and this is compared with the records of their condition at the times of entering, and of leaving, the institution. EDUCATE THE PUBLIC iN WHOLESOMENESS. Dr. Mason further pointed out the educative value among the general community which the anti-consumption movement has caused, in the way of a recognition of the value of a more natural life. “By getting at the poeple by lectures and writing and the newspapers, we are able to do most good, Make the best of laws, and, if they are too far in advance of the time, the people do not observe them, They must be educated ; you -can do nothing at the point of the bayonet.”