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PERTH HOSPITAL.
ITS WORK AND DIFFICULTIES.
Problem of Motor Accidents.
During the last 10 years the population
of the metropolitan area, excluding Fre
mantle, increased by 10 per cent. In
patients at the Perth Hospital increased
in that period by 30 per cent. In 1927
there were 56,361 attendances at the hos
pital's out-patients department, includ
ing 8,392 new cases. In 1937 the total
was 146,615, including 23,730 new cases.
Compared with a population increase of
10 per cent, therefore, out-patients at
the hospital have increased in the same
period by 163 per cent. During 1936-37
nearly 121 per cent of the population
were out-patients of Perth Hospital
These figures were given by the chair
man of the hospital's board of manage
ment, Mr. J. B. Hawkins, when he ad
dressed members of the National Party
at their lunch gathering yesterday. The
position, he said, was either due to after
effects of the depression and the mal
nutrition of that period, or, more prob
ably, people were not eating the proper
foods.
Motor accident cases, Mr. Hawkins
said, filled on an average 15 beds in
Perth Hospital, and they were very un
satisfactory cases to deal with in re
gard to payment of accounts. In 1937 245
motor accident cases were admitted to
hospital wards and 859 were treated in
casualty. Since the beginning of Gov
ernment railways in this State not one
paying passenger had met with a fatal
accident and upwards of 500,000,000 pas
sengers had been carried.
?The underlying cause of these road
accidents," Mr. Hawkins declared, "is
that we have 60 to 80 mile-an-hour cars
in the hands of 30 mile-an-hour drivers,
on 30 to 40 mile-an-hour roads."
A general survey of hospital problems
was given by Mr. Hawkins. He said he
thought the hospital tax should be in
creased, and appealed to his hearers not
to make it a party or political matter.
The tax fund was always exhausted by
the end of the year. The basic wage ad
justment would cost the hospital £2,700
for the year 1938-39 and the new Fed
eral Insurance Act a further £1,300. With
these figures the expenditure would be
over £10,000 above that for 1936-37,
when it was £83,326 and for the year
just closed it would be found to be much
more than the last mentioned sum, he
expected.
Yearly Overhaul
Mr. Hawkins had hoped, he said, that
the new National Insurance Act would
have done something in the way of pre
vention of disease. "For instance," he
said, "It should be quite possible to have
a scheme whereby we could for a start,
all have an overhaul, say once a year,
so that if necessary we could take pre
cautionary measures. It not only could
be done, but should be done."
Mr. Hawkins asked for the co-opera
tion of his audience in regard to the!
new hospital, arging them not to make
the question a political one; also in an
inquiry into the cause of the increase in
the numbers of out-patients at the hos
pital and in making the Lotteries Bill
a permanent measure. "It has justified its
existence," he declared.
Cancer, Mr. Hawkins said, was still on
a steady, small increase. The problem
was so serious that it should become en
tirely a Commonwealth matter. Deaths
from cancer in the Commonwealth in
1935 were 109 per 100,000 persons; in
1936 they had risen to 112. In Western
Australia the figures were 106 and 110
respectively. In 1908 there was only one
death in 16 from cancer; in 1936 there
was one in 81.
Mr. Hawkins concluded with an ex
pression of gratitude to the Press for its
"generous help" in the way of giving
publicity to hospital needs and prob
lems.
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