WAIROA HOSPITAL

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 206, 26 May 1919, Page 3

WAIROA HOSPITAL

A EEBUILDING SCHEME,

Wairoa appears to have outgrown its hospital. In the institution at that placo there is provision for nineteen beds, and there are already in tho liospitul twentysoven patients. A deputation waited on the Minister of PuWio Health (the Hon. G. W. Russell) on Saturday morning to ask that either lie himself or a responsible officer .of his . Department should visit the locality, and see tho conditions of things for himself. It was represented that there was no room on the present site for an oxtension of the buildings, and the board asked for authority and aid to proceed with the erection of a new hospital on a new site.

The Minister said that the erection of a nurses' home for the present hospital' at' Wairoa had been agreed to by the Government only two yeare auo, l>ut be would never iiave agreed to this expenditure if he had known that Hie bnard would propose the scrapping of Hie whole institution in so short a time. His Department would have to consider whether tho existing, buildings, with necessary extensions/ could not be made to servo for, another ten years or so. The country would havo to go very : carefully'in expenditure in the next few years, for there would be many calls on the public purse. However, if all that was required for the present was the purchase of land, for a future building scheme lie would ask Dr. Valintine for an officer to visit the district and to make a report.

It was urged on behalf of tlio deputation that the land on which the uresent hospital stood would \k valuable for building purposes, and there would bo very little loss on the. nurses' home. The site which tho Government wos being asked to buy would be a valuable investment if it never should be required for a hospital.