Your views on retaining neurosurgery services at Dunedin Hospital.
Healthcare and health education are a big part of Dunedin's economic profile; any change that affects these is likely to have major spin-off effects, both on the local economy and access to quality healthcare.
I believe it is shortsighted to think of only the Otago Medical School being affected - anything that changes learning opportunities also has the ability to affect nursing, physiotherapy and other allied health study courses.
The ability of some employers or industries to meet appropriate health and safety requirements could be affected and may in turn affect choices in future industry development.
Dunedin Hospital is also a key gateway for emergency services for adventure tourism and alpine sport areas.
Dunedin has the infrastructure and a large number of long-term staff who can bring a wealth of neurosurgical experience to the care of a patient.
That experience has been won from years of working within the specialty and is an asset that cannot be replaced easily but can be quickly lost without the exposure to the service. This is something that you cannot put a price tag on.
I have yet to hear why Christchurch feels it needs all six neurosurgeons. To date, the only opinion I have heard is that they will get more time off.
Does Christchurch have the infrastructure to increase its catchment by 300,000? Or is it becoming reliant on the new high dependency and neurosurgical units being developed by Christchurch's private hospitals?
Why the need for private beds when there is a fully functional neurosurgical unit with allied health specialties in Dunedin that just require a neurosurgeon to be fully functional, without the added cost of transporting the patients and the hidden social and monetary costs to their families?
Does the development of private neurosurgical beds in Christchurch explain the need for a larger patient catchment?
Malcolm Illingworth
Dunedin
• Mr Illingworth is a registered nurse at Dunedin Hospital. This is his personal opinion.
My wife Debbie, then aged 45, was one of the unfortunate ones who had to be airlifted to Christchurch Hospital by the Canterbury Air Ambulance in February 2008 after having a subarachnoid haemorrhage.
The then neurosurgeon, Dr Suzanne Jackson, was on leave and so emergency surgery was carried out to relieve pressure on the brain before my wife was put into an induced coma in ICU and stabilised for the flight.
Two days later, she was being operated on by the neurosurgeon at Christchurch and put on to full life-support for three weeks.
A family meeting was called as they decided there was no hope of Debbie recovering and support would have to be turned off but the surgeon insisted my wife be sent back to Dunedin to be near family and friends before this was done.
We are grateful to him as my wife fought and pulled through the ordeal, though now with some disabilities.
It was a real strain financially and emotionally being up north all that time and I also wonder if the outcome would have been any different if a surgeon had been on duty here in Dunedin, bearing in mind that this sort of haemorrhage is usually fatal.
Dunedin
[Abridged]
By now, Health Minister Tony Ryall should have been made aware of the problems of centralising all neurosurgical services in one centre (a policy so beloved by bureaucrats).
There is now overwhelming evidence from the medical fraternity concerned with this branch of surgical services that timing is the most crucial factor for a patient's recovery from severe head trauma.
This is particularly so in the outlying areas and in tourist centres, such as the Southern Lakes and Fiordland, let alone the mining and forest industries.
Centralisation will have a dire effect on the Otago University Medical School as well as downgrading hospital facilities.
If Mr Ryall does not intervene in this scenario, he could be made legally accountable for some of the possible deaths or permanent disabilities to patients because of delays, if next of kin wish to seek compensation.
Hampden
[Abridged]
Arthur Linnell (4.8.10) comments on Clutha-Southland MP Bill English's meaningless, two-sentence response to the ODT on neurosurgery services being maintained in Dunedin but Mr English replies with yet another meaningless response.
Nowhere does he simply say, in plain English, "I support the retention of the services in Dunedin."
We are told approximately five people will die each year without such a service in the Southland-Otago catchment area. What could be plainer than that, Mr English ?
Peter Attwooll
City Rise
From the flood of material in newspapers and other media, it seems that there is more at stake in this controversial issue than provincial rivalries, university prestige, economic prudence and other factors that motivate mindsets and influence perspectives.
As a Central Otago resident, the one that concerns me more than any of the above is the real issue the medical experts have pointed out: moving all neurosurgical services to Christchurch will certainly cause death to patients of Otago and Southland.
Therefore, it is imperative that the Minister of Health and members of Southern District Health Board being interviewed by the Auckland-based advisory panel head, Anne Kolbe, be clear on these facts.
Their ultimate decision involves a choice between life and death.
I further suggest that the members of the panel, at least two of whom practise in large cities, be given a helicopter ride over the whole of Otago and Southland so that they can get some idea of the huge areas, mountainous regions and sometimes flooded plains, inaccessible and snow-bound roads that could so easily delay the transport of our urgent patients to Christchurch Hospital.
To make a responsible decision, a mature and moral choice, they need to know the facts.
Sr Pauline Gallagher RSM
Alexandra
If there are two professional people ready and willing to start work in the Dunedin neurosurgery unit, please let them and restart this life-saving service with no more bickering and delays.
Mornington
[Abridged]
