INFECTIOUS DISEASE & ISOLATION

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 233, 21 December 1927, Page 8

INFECTIOUS DISEASE & ISOLATION

THE protest of the National Council of Women against the proposal of the Auckland Hospital Board to erect a new infectious diseases block in the present hospital grounds cannot be lightly disposed of. The attitude of the deputation that waited oil the boat'd yesterday was very definite. In the words of Mrs. John Cook, speaking on behalf of 15,000 members, the N.C.W. “viewed with alarm and suspicion the erection of an infectious diseases block in the present hospital grounds.’’ Moreover, the deputation claimed there was no isolation at present and there was an inter-change of staff between the infectious and the general wards.

The answer of the board’s chairman, Mr. W. Wallace, was that the board had to be guided by the opinion of its medical officers. It might be pointed out that it is the duty of the board to be guided to some extent also by the wishes and sentiment of the general public—the people who pay the rates which maintain the hospital. It is all very well for the honorary medical staff, while stressing the necessity of a new infectious diseases block, to express the opinion that a site below the present hospital and in the hospital grounds is the most desirable. There may be a pardonable suspicion that the word “convenient” could well be substituted for “desirable.” Naturally, the members of the honorary staff prefer that their hospital patients should be in one location, instead of general cases being at the hospital and infectious cases elsewhere, perhaps some miles away. But it is to be feared that their desire foT convenience outweighs their sense of precaution in relation to the proximity of infectious and non-infectious eases.

The inter-change of nurses between the general and infectious wards is not at all a desirable thing. Neither is it desirable from the public point of view—however doctors may differ — that a medical man should walk from an infectious case to see a general ease a few yards off. An infectious diseases hospital quite apart from the general hospital seems indicated, and it would perhaps be better if the patients there should be attended by doctors who could confine themselves strictly to this class of hospital work and not be called upon to attend patients in the general hospital as well.