TAIHAPE BASE HOSPITAL

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3597, 8 October 1920, Page 5

TAIHAPE BASE HOSPITAL

(To the Editor.) Sir, —As an old-time member of the Wanganui Hospital Board, I read your report of the meeting re the above with some interest. Why not have a base hospital at Taihape? Just so; and why not have a cortege of surgeons on the Papakai Roadf The answer is, that one broken leg and one dislocated shoulder in twenty two years—which is Papakai Road’s record for that' period —would not supply the necessary cases; and the principals, professors, lecturers, surgeons students, night and- day nurses, wardsmen, etc., .etc., would have nothing to do and consequent y such an institution could not possibly justify its existence. in such a place. Such institutions must, of necessity, be in or near the great centres of population where clinical cases are numerous, and to which occasional serious cases occurring in outlying districts can be brought.

The Taihape Hospit^ n is a Branch Hospital—not a cottage hospital as was originally intended, and; should be supported out of the Hospital rate the same as the base hospital at Wanganui; there should be ho reason for the appeafl for private donations and subscriptions now being made. But there has always been a somewhat sordid element of parochialism on the Wanganui Hospital Board, and 'it.seems as if that element, which resisted for several years the establishment of a hospitail here at all, were again in the ascendant. But we got the hospital, after a hard fight; and all are a greed that it has abundantly justified its existence. However, a base hospital is quite another affair, and I think that if our local members of the Board, combined with those from Ohakuhe, and Rangitikei, went carefully and thoroughly into the finances of the Board, they would be in a position to insist that our local, hospital should be treated as an essential part of the Wanganui HospitaS system, and should be maintained, staffed and equipped to meet the growing requirements of the district as a branch hospital.—l am, etc., ' i - JAMES SMITH ' "7 - Papakai Road. ' j■ • " -■' ■ ' ■■mm-