If I take a risk and guess his age, I’d put him in his 60s. This realisation was followed with a mixed array of emotions as I looked at some of the younger people gathered who may very well have been born there too but, at this point in time, don’t have the luxury of giving birth there themselves.
The Lumsden Maternity Centre should never have been closed. I haven’t heard of anyone outside of the then DHB who thinks this was a good idea because, frankly, it wasn’t.
I then thought about the irony of what was happening on the day. Community members young and old were there with big smiles, sleeves rolled up, doing the hard yards taking care of their hibernating maternity centre.
They were doing this with a sense of pride, and hope that one day it would be back to its former glory where some of those with shovels in their hands might be able to give birth there like so many have before.
So, what was ironic? The medical trust could have contracted professionals to come in and do the work and passed the bill on to Health NZ, but this never even crossed their mind. Instead, they put an "open tender" out on Facebook for anyone who wanted to come and help. And they did. Many hands made light work and by lunchtime we were all done.
This is how our country was built — our communities doing the work and taking great pride in what they did, not just at the time but into the future as well. This was not the first working bee the former trustee who was born there has attended, and it will most likely not be the last.
Following the successfully opened Southern Charity Hospital (go Missy!) I have just read of another charity hospital opening up in Wellington. This means we now have them in Auckland, Christchurch, Southland and Wellington. These communities are filling a gap where successive governments over the years have dropped the ball.
I think we need to go back to our communities being in control of their own future, but this time let’s give them the funding and the resources to do it. We could return more bang for buck spending it locally and, in some cases, might not spend anything at all.
— Rob Scott, Southland District Mayor
