Council’s SOS hospital campaign premature
BELIEVE it or not, Dunedin is to get a new hospital. Its location, if changed, is not that relevant as a hospital is for patients and those who care for them. What would be needed if the build was on another site would be adequate parking and a bus service route that ran into the hospital grounds. The medical school could be a wing of the hospital itself, if relocation of the school was necessary.
The SOS campaign of the DCC, to have the new hospital remain on, or nearby, to its present site is purely political and premature to say the least. You would think the reasoning is that unless we get our new hospital on its present site we don’t want it. Ask anyone who visits our present hospital how easy it is to find a car park within walking distance, or what bus they can catch to get there?
Our council is getting rid of car parks to make way for the ridiculous cycleway through the centre of the city. Anybody who requires admission to hospital will not care where the hospital is as long as they can get treated. Any visitor would be happy if they could park adjacent to the hospital or hop off the bus at the main entrance. Any debate on the new hospital should begin when its location is known, not now.
Ross Davidson
Wakari
Mental health
YOUR editorial criticism of Mike King (ODT, 18.5.17) is misplaced. Only those who have experience of the overwhelming frustrations that accrue when dealing with mental health services can have any understanding of the exasperation and resentment that builds when, in true Sisyphean mode, it all comes to nothing. Psychiatry considers itself independent of other health providers and as such, autonomous, which translates into a culture of introversion, an aversion to scrutiny and an assumption of condign lack of accountability.
As a health service dependent on taxpayer funding, its mandate is to serve the society which supports it. There is no escape now, as in the past, into the mystique of the mind as separate from the body, to an abstruse position not attained by other health sciences.
That way lies the continuity of stigma so long fostered to the detriment of all society. Mike should be applauded for his considerable achievements in the service of social justice for the vulnerable.
V. H. Markham
Maryhill
Thanks
I WANT to thank everyone who helped me when I had an accident with my mobility scooter near Pak’n Save on the afternoon of Saturday, May 13. I was very grateful for the help as I would not have been able to get the scooter off me without it. I also appreciated the kindness and concern in making sure I was OK. Please accept this as a personal thankyou to each one of you. Phyllis McPherson
Dunedin
BIBLE READING: He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. — Isaiah 40.29.