THE WHITE PLAGUE

Hokitika Guardian, 20 April 1922, Page 3

THE WHITE PLAGUE

A NOBLE APPEAL. CANTERBURY HOSPITAL BOARD’S ACTION. ( IV TKLEGIIAPII -PER PRESS ASSOCIATION ] CHRISTCHURCH, April 19. “If \ew Zealand legislators could he compelled to sit in the tuberculosis dispensary with me. day by day, for a few weeks, and listen, as I have to listen, to the despairing words of heartbroken fathers, mothers, husbands, and wives, and watch their tears flow, as I 'have to watch them; something definite and active might he done to lid the community of the terrible scourge of consumption.” This passage occurred in the annual report of Dr (t. J. Bbiekmoro, Medical Director of the North Canterbury Hospital .Board’s Tuberculosis Institution, received by the board at its meeting today.

The Director took the opportunity to make a forcible and stirring appeal for more widespread and thorough treatment of consumption in New Zealand.

“The Cashmere Sanatorium.” stai d Dr Bhickmore. “has now been open 12 years, and as regards the campaign against consumption in New Zealand generally, it is very discouraging to have to record that no real progress has been made in this time. Such

measures as are being taken are being carried out in a piecemeal, and consequently, an inefficient fashion. There is no defined national policy; no uniform and universal scheme for dealing with tuberculosis in New Zealand, and. until this is adopted, no real progress can be made. At the present time, only two Hospital Boards in New Zealand are provided with sanatoria, one being in the North Canterbury district and the other in the Otago district. No hospital board in the North Island has a sanatorium of its own for tuberculous persons; although several have provided a certain amount of accommodation for Advanced owes. These hospital hoards are in the position of being compelled to tell persons with early, and eonsequcnlv in many cases curable, disease, who apply to them for treatment, that they can offer them no treatment, but they can tell the unhappy sufferers that when they become incurable, the boards have provided a place in which they can die. away from their home and friends. Your board has spent much money in trying to deal adequately with the consumptives within its borders, but of what avail is it to have expensive buildings in which to treat consumptives who can he cured, and to sc"regale those who cannot, when the hoard’s district is surrounded hv other districts in which no measures whatever are being taken, and whose consumptives can pass Freely into this district at their own will and pleasure? Of what avail is it to try and rid North Canterbury of consumptives when, as fast as its own subjects are dealt with, their place is taken by others from outside? Ashburton and Ti-

maru have no means of treating consumptives, and scarcely a week passes that 1 do not receive applications from persons in those districts for admission to this sanatorium. Indeed, people come from all over New Zealand, asking fir admission, mainly because there is no place in their own district in which they can he treated. In trying, under the existing conditions, to eradicate, ca.nsumption From North Canterbury, your hoard lin.s undertaken the task of a Sisyphus, and. with about as much chance of success as he had. Much activity lias recently been shown in connection with the problematical entry of bubonic plague into New Zealand, hut this other plague is allowed to stalk almost unchecked through the country, slaying bun(h’erjs, and maiming probably fjyp