HOSPITAL FINANCE

Hokitika Guardian, 13 October 1928, Page 7

HOSPITAL FINANCE

PROBLEM IN SYDNEY. QUEENSLAND’S LOTTERY SCHEME. SYDNEY, October 4. Despite constant talk of reform, Sydney seems impotent to deal effectively with its public hospital problem, which is daily becoming more acute. An illustration of it is the tragic and poignant position of one of the largest and best-known of these hospitals, Royal .Prince Alfred, as revealed a day or two ago by those charged with its control. The fact that people are flooding it with applications from all parts of Australia and New Zealand for cancer treatment, in the new.'department which it has established under the Federal Governmen’s scheme, makes the position worse. With vast commitments, and going back at the rate of £20,000 a year, it has a bigger army of sufferers waiting for admission than ever it can hope to accommodate. At its wits’ end, the hospital has to make improvised beds out of couches ordinarily used for convalescent patients, when, as is always the case, its 580 beds are fully oca upiod. Of 400 people awaiting admission to-dav, 100 are inoperable cancer cases. The fact is officially admitted that not long ago, four convalscent patients had to be removed from their beds at 3 o’clock in the morning to make room for the victims of a bad motor smash. If it is a simple case of the removal of tonsils, for example one has to wait two or three months for admission. The clear-cut fact is that Sydney to-day has not .sufficient public hospital accommodation for its needs.

Although the Government has sternly set Its face against the idea;, for fear obviously c,f offending the Church, there are many in the community who still think that it ought to rim a lottery. along the lines of the Queensland “Golden Casket/’ scheme, for a. help to relieve the position, and at the same time keep within the State, for a great humanitarian service, a vast sum of money that now pours out of it and into the Temple of Chance.