Institute for consumptive patients unlikey

The members of the Hospital Board who formed a deputation this week to the Minister of Public Health received no encouragement from him in respect of their request that the Government should establish in the South Island - in Central Otago for preference - an institution for consumptive patients such as serves the North Island at Cambridge, and thus relieve the board of the task of erecting a sanatorium in its own district.

Mr Fowlds made it very clear that any hope that the Government would entertain such a proposition might be definitely abandoned.

The policy which the Government has adopted in the matter is to throw upon the hospital boards of the various districts the onus of providing, whether out of rates or through private subscriptions, supplemented in either case by State subsidy, sanatoria for the treatment of consumptive
cases.

There will be no establishment by the Government itself of another sanatorium.

Dr Batchelor said from 20 to 25 percent of the cases that are treated in the hospitals present symptoms of tubercular trouble, though, of course, it is in much smaller proportion of cases that the disease is manifested in the acute form known as consumption . . .

If a sanatorium were established by the Government in Central Otago, where the climate is suitable and where, moreover, employment might be provided in the open air for the patients whose condition admitted of their being put to work, and if the institution were conducted on
scientific principles under the management of a competent medical practitioner, who should be resident officer, we have little doubt that, as Dr Batchelor anticipates, results of a gratifying kind would be secured.

The argument in favour of the establishment of a sanatorium in the South Island under direct State control is, upon the whole, so weighty as to have been entitled to a greater amount of consideration than it has received from the Government . . . - ODT, 9.4.1908.