Happy days!
Editor,
May I send my congratulations to the Porirua Little Theatre company for their wonderful production of Disco Inferno which my wife and I attended last week.
From the moment the show started the cast had the audience in their spell with their enthusiasm and highly professional renditions of the 1970s songs and dance routines.
My admiration goes out to this company which have done such a magnificent job in converting the former store at 4 Lynley Pl into a working theatre in such a short space of time.
All praise also to mayor Nick Leggett and Greg Patience in their involvement in pushing forward the premises for the use of the theatre group. Porirua City should be proud that this highly talented and motivated theatre group was not allowed to sink into oblivion.
If you haven’t had the opportunity to see what they have done may I strongly recommend that you go and see and experience what they have to offer. Being both in our 70s my wife and I felt that we had shed 30 years from our age during the performance. Ah, happy days! removed from reality senior Capital & Coast Health management has become on this subject.
My advice is that they spend 24-hours at the centre to see what actually goes on.
The centre sees patients with chest pains, abdominal pains, infants and children in respiratory distress. Febrile infants and children present in their droves and given the high incidence of rheumatic fever and meningitis in the Porirua basin quick assessment and treatment is vital.
Last week, overnight four of the patients I saw presented with acute asthma exacerbations requiring treatment.
Frequent presenters are the injured patients with lacerations and broken bones. We see numerous sporting injuries from mild sprains to limb threatening dislocations. Other common injuries treated are burns to infants and toddlers. The area has a large population of psychiatric patients who frequently use the A&M 24 hours a day for urgent psychiatric assessment.
Over winter the centre can see over 100 patients in 24 hours. Some days the centre sees more patients than Wellington ED and we do it with far less staff. Many of these are patients who simply cannot get into their own GP or who have been told it could take a week to see them.
In other words, the A&M centre is the backbone of acute medical care in the Porirua basin. It is well run, efficient and a credit to the management and clinical staff who make the service possible. Many times I have heard patients phone home and say to relatives that, ‘‘I am at the Kenepuru emergency department’’.