South Otago hospitals
ONE effect of the influenza epidemic in Otago has been to force into prominence the absence of adequate hospital accommodation in certain country districts. Attention has been drawn in particular to the difficulties under which the residents of Tahakopa wrestled with the visitation. While the disabilities under which they suffered during the trying period were no doubt due in a large measure to lack of easy railway communication, there is no room for question that the position in the Catlins district during the epidemic has furnished a very strong argument for the establishment of a cottage hospital at Owaka. The argument applies no doubt with equal force to the hospital requirements of other country centres. The feeling at Owaka seems to have manifested itself in the circulation of a petition requesting the Otago Hospital Board to establish a cottage hospital there. This is a request that should ordinarily be sure of a sympathetic reception. There are, however, crosscurrents of opinion in South Otago as to the manner in which the hospital requirements of the country districts may be most suitably met. The movement for the establishment of a separate hospital district for South Otago represents one form of the agitation for improved conditions, and the present effort on the part of the residents of the Catlins district to secure a cottage hospital at Owaka is apparently construed as tending to drive athwart the separatist proposal. There is probably not a great deal in the view that the petitioners in the Catlins district aim at the defeat of the movement for the creation of a separate hospital district. What impresses itself on their mind, is the need for the provision of hospital accommodation at Owaka, whether the district remains under the control of the Otago Hospital Board or is transferred to the jurisdiction of a new board.