Shocking conditions need rapid response
Re the shocking revelations of the working conditions for top surgeons at the present run-down Dunedin Hospital (ODT 29.11.24 : "Surgical gear often contaminated"): It appears that the situation is now so serious — and obviously has been so for a very long time — that the stance taken by Christopher Luxon and his ministers, Shane Reti and new governance leader of Health NZ Dr Levy amounts to criminal neglect of the state of health for citizens of Otago, Southland, Queenstown, Lakes District and the Waitaki area.
What does it take for the prime minister of our country to take his head out of the sandpit and do something about this state of affairs?
It is time to stop duffing around Mr Luxon and get on with building our urgently needed new hospital.
You are our prime minister. Start acting like one. Make the decision now — or are you afraid of contravening Nicola Willis' desire to hang on tightly to the purse strings?
Get it done now. People's lives hang in the balance. We are waiting and witnessing.
War zone
Reading some of the stories in the ODT about Dunedin hospital in the last few days, almost gave me the impression that our hospital is currently located to the middle of a war zone.
Any large institution such as a major hospital, new or old, is likely to have occasional problems with machinery or buildings; no big hospital is immune from it. That is the reason they have specialised works and maintenance staff attached to hospitals.
Anyone who has worked in any big hospital should know it. I am sure the hospital had similar problems in the past also, with no major adverse effects.
All our highly paid specialist staff are capable of functioning under all adverse circumstances.
Such stories may not reassure the common people, already worried about their health needs.
Roofing iron
When members of the public have multiple roof leaks over a lengthy period of time they get a new roof. I’ve never heard of them abandoning a 40-50-year-old house because of roof leaks. In fact many people reroof houses that are three times that age.
Remember old villas were built between approx 1890-1910, so they are between 115-135 years old now .
The real issue
Having gratefully spent time at Dunedin Hospital I just wonder if the politics around the possible upgrade and options available according to budget, are clouding the real issue.
I see the hospital as physically there which is a start.
I am sure with necessary upgrades to the operating theatres and a way of storing all the equipment which seems to end up deposited in the corridors.
Sure we would like a state-of-the-art hospital — the amazing people who work there deserve better conditions — but the issue needs to step away from the political angst.
Policy agendas
So, if privatisation is not Dr Reti's "overt" policy (ODT 30.11.24), is it his covert one?
The effects and counter-effects of cruelty
Thank you, Jill Rutherford, for your wonderful letter (26.11.24) showing the effect of Israel’s cruelty on one innocent Palestinian family.
This story illustrates Israel’s appalling treatment of the wider Palestinian population both now and in past decades.
I have not been to Israel but I went to Jordan in 2012. There, I toured with a Palestinian driver/guide who told me of his father who was never allowed to return to Palestine to see his family’s ancestral lands.
My driver’s eyes were filled with tears as he told this story of his refugee father whose life had been overturned by the 1967 Six Day War.
I shared my plane trip to Egypt from Amman with a Jordanian Friends of Palestine group who were travelling to the West Bank via the Rafah crossing. They were going to support their Palestinian brothers who were having their olive trees ripped out by land-grabbing Israeli settlers.
I hope they succeeded in their quest to at least enter the West Bank.
Palestinians are real people with feelings and aspirations, not just targets for self-serving Zionist Israelis. Nor are they pawns in some divine plan to reward self-righteous evangelical Christians.
I note Jill Rutherford’s comments about how appalled her Israeli friends are about what’s happening in Gaza and West Bank. I feel they are in a very small minority; 75% of Israelis want a temporary ceasefire for return of hostages, then the war to continue: those large protests every Saturday night are to get the hostages back..
We must also remember the 750,000 illegal Israeli settlers in West Bank have only one ambition: more, more more. I am concerned every illegal Israeli settler further boosts the right-wing voting block which offers no hope for a two-state solution.
Days of the pixie dust economy over
Could the Dunedin City Council be any more fiscally inept, even if it tried to be?
Firstly, amidst a rates increase "catastrophe", and recent claims published in the ODT by elected officials to be far more fiscally prudent in their "line by line" costs, they commit another unbudgeted $200,000 to the pointless hospital campaign. This is on top of the previous $100,000 of unauthorised spending on the same project.
I appreciate that it may grind the gears of many, but a more fiscally astute government are now in charge and they have stated that $1.8 billion is the budget for the hospital. Perhaps the DCC thinks the era of the pixie dust economy still exists, as that is the way they seem to run things.
Dunedin residents need to send an SOS to central government to save our city and get rid of the drunks in charge of the bar before we become the most unliveable, expensive, socialist back water of New Zealand.
I plead for nonpartisan and fiscally astute professionals and private enterprise people to please run for council at our next election so we can get wholesale change and have a fighting chance of saving Dunedin from the debt noose.
Big numbers
Some very interesting costings regarding the George St playground. $600,000 also equally matches the weekly interest payments the DCC makes on its loan.
Small numbers
I look forward to the daily quiz in the ODT but was disappointed with one answer in yesterday's (26.11.24) edition. "How many councilors are there on the Dunedin City Council?" I believe my answer of "too many" was correct.
Address Letters to the Editor to: Otago Daily Times, PO Box 517, 52-56 Lower Stuart St, Dunedin. Email: editor@odt.co.nz
