CHILDREN'S WARD

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 54, 18 May 1942, Page 5

CHILDREN'S WARD

AN URGENT NEED DRASTIC POSITION IN WILVKATANE We wonder how many of our readers realise the vital, need for the establishment of a children's ward in the Whakatane Hospital? Only those who have actually experienced the drastic conditions as they obtain to-day can have any conception of the nerve wracking ordeal through which patients are compelled to go. It would be ridiculous, were it not something of an indictment upon us all as l a community that we compel patients' whose first requirement is restfulness and peace to undergo such treatment.

Men coming direct from serious operations are forced owing to the limited accommodation to be day: in day out next door to a bedlain of commotion, screams, yells and juvenile noises of all descriptions making it totally impossible to obtain any relaxation or rest. Some indeed have been transformed into nervous avrecks and only last week a Borough Councillor who was undergoing treatment completely broke down and had to be hurried home in a state of nervous prostration. The ridiculous position that we are forced to i'acc in this case was that the very institution to which he had been committed to be healed was in all seriousness, more likely to> have ended his dayst by a slow process of mental torture.

The whole staff from the Supervisor down realises the hopelessness of the position and are doing their utmost to cope -with it. The worst children are removed to remote parts of the buildings in order to try and give a certain amount of peace to the adult wards, but asi the procession of new patients, grows daily under the Social Security Scheme, it has become a seemingly hopeless problem until a definite ward is provided for the children. Hospital rates: to-day are causing alarm owing to their continued expansion. Whakatane iSt sufleiing more than most other centres in this respect. But we must face up to the fact that a children's ward is absolutely essential economically as welli as from a physical and: humanitarian point of view and the sooner we set about its construction the quicker we shall be rid of sucli pathetic instances of suffering as have been brought to our notice of late.