The Otago Southland Employers Association, with approximately 1450 member organisations throughout the two provinces, has, in many different ways, a significant stakeholding in the health services and training capabilities available in our southern region. We seek to add our strong voice towards supporting the retention of our neurosurgery services and, potentially connected to this, towards retaining the full range of quality-focused medical training capacities that have for so long been available from within the University of Otago Medical School.
Given the status of the current neurosurgical situation and what we see as a potential negative economic spin-out across other teaching and research activity levels, we will be stepping forward to directly lobby Health Minister Tony Ryall on the important matters at hand. Besides the obvious human health services issues, the prospect of a depreciation of our local economic impact status is not something we are prepared to accept without opposition.
John Scandrett
Chief executive
Otago Southland Employers Association
My father, Richard Robinson, was the director of the neurosurgical unit at Dunedin Hospital for many years. Our family emigrated to New Zealand in 1951 so he could take up this position and he worked tirelessly for the people of New Zealand, and particularly Otago, until his retirement in 1981.
Until the arrival of Sam Bishara, he was the only neurosurgeon in New Zealand in a public hospital outside Auckland. This meant he worked seven days a week, 12 hours a day as the need arose, and it did quite often. Family time and personal privacy were something he lost when giving his time unstintingly.
A quietly spoken man, he made no differentiation between illness, accident and idiocy when treating his patients. This legacy of hard work and dedication will be soon forgotten if we lose our neurosurgical unit. The man who was shocked when medical students wore pyjamas to exams would be devasted at the latest proposal.
Celia Davies
Normanby
I am deeply concerned that our resident neurosurgery services at Dunedin are under threat of removal. This would place the safety of southern people at great risk, especially the young. We have the oldest university in New Zealand, full of lively and adventurous young people from all over the country. These are our future. Young people are at greater risk of head injury than older folk.
Much has been made of life and death issues. In my professional life as a psychiatrist, I have worked with may whose neurological crises have not killed them but left lasting effects on them, with cognitive impairment and organic personality change. This has effectively lost them to the health and future wealth of our nation and painfully disrupted forever the lives of those who loved them and depended on them. Early, expert intervention can mitigate this.
Dr Gill Caradoc-Davies
Portobello [Abridged]
We absolutely support the rention of neurosurgical services in Dunedin. The huge rural population of Otago and Southland means that many head injuries are already critically distant from emergency services. Add to that the distance and time it takes to get to Christchurch after preliminary trauma treatment and we believe the loss of Dunedin's neurosurgical facility would have many disastrous outcomes.
Not only the patient's welfare would be compromised by such a change. Family support is critical at all stages of recovery. Christchurch is too far away.
Our support for the rention of these services in Dunedin comes from personal experience. Both of us know how much more difficult our situation would have been, both immediately and during the long process of recovery from a very severe traumatic head injury, had Dunedin Hospital's neurosurgical personnel and facilities not been available to us.
It's a no-brainer!
Tim and Prue Wallis
Wanaka
Please add my voice to all that has been said about the need for neurosurgery in Dunedin. How dare the powers that be even suggest that the service be moved to Christchurch.
I feel it is important Health Minister Tony Ryall comes and faces the people of Otago and Southland rather than wave the big stick from Wellington.
Ted Turner
Dunedin [Abridged]
Over two decades ago, I required neurosurgery in Dunedin. I am now nearly 85 and still leading an active and (I hope) useful life, all due to the skill and care of the neurosurgical department of Dunedin Hospital.
That was in the bad old days. It seems outrageous to me that the present generation and those yet to come will not be able to experience such skill and care in our own hospital when we already have a long and wonderful tradition. We must resist this outrageous attempt to centre all neurosurgery in Christchurch.
Geoff Hughes
Kew [Abridged]
I have been following the letters to the editor and they put forward vaild points for retaining neurosurgical services in Dunedin.
It seems to me that the removal of these services is just more undermining of the special medical environment that exists here with Dunedin Hospital, the Otago Medical School and the University of Otago. I am sure it would suit the administrators if we all packed up and moved to Auckland. We are here to stay and it's about time regional strengths were celebrated, not continually eroded.
Hazel van Raalte
Fairfield [Abridged]
Congratulations to the Otago Daily Times on supporting neurosurgery services in the South.
The old adage that the customer is always right has been consistently ignored by businesses in recent years, chasing the 'big is better" and "centralisation is more efficient" themes. Surveys continually lament the demise of local automomy.
Our health services are too important for sevice providers to follow flawed business practices. Heaven forbid, it could probably be argued that we would all be better off with vouchers to fly to India for our non-urgent health operations and our hospitals could be reduced substantially. That's not the New Zealand most Kiwis want.
K.J. Lawson
St Clair [Abridged]
This letter is written to exhort all those who have not done so to take action to keep this service in Dunedin and write to the Minister of Health, the director-general of health and to lobby their Mps. Once lost, it will be hard to regain.
A neurological service is vitally needed in Dunedin at the centre of our population of 300,000 in the South. Serious spinal and head injuries are on the increase, particularly with road traffic accidents. We must do our best for these patients and for their families and friends who would desperately want to stay close.
Peter Hinds
Dunedin [Abridged]
I am very alarmed about the prospect of Dunedin Hospital losing its resident neurosurgery services. This puts me in fear for people's lives when they have had a head injury in the southern region.
I suffered a very serious closed head injury when I was knocked off a motorbike. As a result of this accident I was in a coma for five days and in intensive care for seven days, and this was only the start of a very long road to recovery.
There are aspects of this injury I still struggle with today, 22 years later.
There are important reasons why we need a neurosurgery team at Dunedin Hospital: the area covered is huge and includes Cental Otago ski fields, lakes and mountainous areas (head and spinal injuries); it covers the southern oceans with fishing boats, cruise liners etc (head injuries); it covers the Southland area, with transfers being flown in all the time (head and spinal injuries); the extra flying/driving times to Christchurch could worsen a patient's condition and in worst-case scenarios kill them.
Is the added danger to the lives of head-injury patients worth the gamble? What money would be saved with the transfers of patients etc?
We here in Dunedin will not stop fighting to save people's lives and keep the neurosurgical unit here in Dunedin.
Nicki Fairburn
Dunedin [Abridged]
In 2004 I suffered a subdural haemotoma brought about by the use of warfarin, which was prescribed to mitigate the effects of arterial fibrillation.
This condition was initially misdiagnosed as just being a hedache. By the time the condition was correctly diagnosed I required urgent neurosurgery to relieve the pressure on the brain. If there had been no neurosurgery available, the outcome may have been brain damage or death.
Cases like mine emphasise the need for the retention of neurosurgeons in Dunedin.
John Kennedy
Concord
Concerning the Otago Daily Times' printed form letters to Tony Ryall about the proposed neurosurgery cuts, can we be sure such letters will be counted individually by the Ministry of Health?
Some years ago, when a particular government department was out of favour, an organisation to which I belonged advised its members to base their protest letters on information it supplied in a newsletter. It quoted a leaked internal memo from that department which stated all form letters clipped from a newspaper or other source would only be counted as one. Thus the department could claim it had received a far lower protest total.
L.J.Hancock
Dunedin
[It would be preferable that write their own letters. However, for those not confident in doing so, the form letter provides an alternative - Editor]
