Hospital is Taxed by Infectious Cases

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 411, 20 July 1928, Page 16

Hospital is Taxed by Infectious Cases

POSITION DESPERATE CROSS-INFECTION REPORTED With accommodation for 85 Infectious diseases cases, the Auckhand Hospital is now treating 64 diphtheria patients and 58 scarlet fever victims. The position is described as desperate, and endeavours are being made to accommodate the patients in isolation at private homes.

There is an unusual prevalence of scarlet fever and diphtheria in Auckland at present, though the health authorities advance the assurance that the diseases are widely spread throughout the district, and do not assume the seriousness of an epidemic. The departmental officers are usually reluctant to insist upon isolation in the patients’ homes, because satisfaction is seldom reached in such instances. The superintendent of the hospital, Dr. C. E. Maguire, has been compelled to request precautions of this nature, however, and in the circumstances he justly disclaims responsibility for cross-infection among the patients. So close are the beds, and so crowded the institution that several cases of cross-infection have been recorded recently, and temporary provision for the accommodation of isolation cases might be found to be necessary. Cr. T. J. Hughes, an officer of the Health Department, says of the accumulation of cases:— “In normal times we send all cases to the hospital, and prefer to do that. We cannot be sure of getting complete isolation in the home, however careful we might be. If we cannot make satisfactory arrangements in the home and the hospital cannot take the cases, then we make the best provision we can outside.”