OUR HOSPITAL.

Waikato Independent, Volume XXVI, Issue 2608, 10 April 1926, Page 4

OUR HOSPITAL.

(To the Editor). Sir, —We have got nothing from our appeals to the Minister of Health and the' Waikato Hospital Board for help to maintain the local nursing home. We have established the fact, that hospital facilities for maternity work are not encouraged by the present organisation, whose duty it is to see that such service is rendered. In our meetings we have been unfortunate. We meet Mr Young at Hamilton when lie opened that costly building, the nurses’ home, and apparently wo presented our project at an inopportune time. It was quite human that he should, under the conditions, magnify the importance of the Hamilton Nurses' Home and fail to see the more important question of providing maternity hospitals throughout the country district of New Zealand, and in Cambridge, as the deputation asked. He did, however, recognise that we laid before hint a sound, economic scheme. This he refused to handle, because it does not fit in with regulations. We had appfOaehed him because we were aware it did not tit in the system that had failed to provide maternity hospitals, and we looked to him to alter the rules, regu-' lations or laws, so that this service to the people may be provided. He referred us to the Waikato Hospital Board in a way suggestive that we had been guilty of a breach of etiquette in not going to that body in the first instance. The situation at once changed from an economic handling of a community hospital to that of political ineptitude in hospital administration.. This we knew full well, but we felt we had to try the existing organisation out to its final result. This lias been reached. One member of the board whom we pressed the urgent need of the existing nursing home for financial assistance, said: “Lot the- Cambridge people help themselves and find the money for the maternity hospital in Cambridge, When they have the necessary money let them approach, us and we will deliberate about the plans and after the property has been made over to us, we will manage it for you." Another member told us: "That it would take four years to carry out such deliberations!" Another member thought it an impertinence that we should have approached the Waikato Hospital Board with what lie called "a bankrupt scheme." The board refused the suggestion of the Mayor of Cambridge that a committee should be set up to consider the matter, and the only member who attempted to help us was Mr Lee, of OtorOhanga. We believe his help wps irrespective of the gibe that had been thrown ns, ( bv one of the gentlemen of the board, that if Cambridge were supplied with a maternity hospital ail the other little places of the district would be clamouring for similar institutions. Well! Arc they not needed? Seeing that the Waikato Hospital Board is curtailed in function by Hamilton starving the districts of the Waikato, should not this body bo reorganised on ah economic 'basis that will supply the needs of the people and not deny them? Having failed to provide that which was made necessary by the wide advertisement giveh to maternal mortality by the late Minister of Health, the Waikato Hospital Board excuses its failure with financial embarrassment and the advise of a few departmental medical men that women should be confined in their own homes and not in properly equipped places.' The dishonesty of this advice from inexperienced medical men is to be con-, deinned in the strongest manner; , it is a hundred years behind the times. With the persistent fall in the birthrate has arisen a much higher percentage of disease during the gestation and .puerperal periods. The ways, of civilization have displaced the barbarism that marked the early history of our race. There is a greater national need of proper service for maternity than for the prosecution of surgery designed to lengthen by a few months the lives of those who have already reached the end of life, or for costly buildings to accommodate nurses who should be boarded out. Community hospitals do not belong to nurses, to medical, men, to the hospital boards, to the Health Department, nor to the Government; they belong to the people. Then economic administration demands the wholehearted co-operation of nurses, doctors, trustees and Health Department; and that administration,* to be successful, must be removed from 7>olitical control, beyond that of money that may be paid in its support, .from: the Treasury. One of the members**! the Waikato Hospital Board complained to us as though it were our fault and not. his, that the Matamata Hospital is costing them ft £IOOO a year to run. This was denied by the member 1 for that district and it went at that. We were unable to convey to the board.

that dhelr ,; Management is ? too costly, too closed up, to supply the needs of the people or to excite their interest in hospital matters. We were also unable to convey to them the fact that their achievement, of which they are most proud—-the closed hospital system—has beenvn holly condemned by the highest authority in the world in hospital <Wministration, Dr McEachcrn, as the very worst feature of the hospital, system in New Zealand. At the present juncture the Waikato Hospital "Board cannot help us even if it wanted to. In the past its management has been so bad that reorganisation is imperative. Should a sound reorganisation result, the '"needs of Cambridge will, be met. In the meantime, are the people of Cambridge willing to hold up with monetary aid our present nursing home managed bv Nurse Dickey? If so, I am prepared to support the scheme with a like sum to that which I gave when Nurse Russel’s home -was burned down, providing the Independent will, in conjunction with .the Mayor, do the collecting.-—I am, etc., • W. STAPLE Y.