High Cost Of Being Ill

Letter to the Editor TIOR the Polynesians of the Cook Islands a well-equipped hospital is provided in Rarotonga, where they are treated without charge. Europeans, however, are not provided for.

A sick white man, though he may be hard-up, is billed at nearly £4 a week.

Such cases are victims of worry, as well as illness.

It is time that free treatment was made available to the unfinancial; for no man is eternally wealthy in this Group, where all the well-off get their funds from outside As things are now, a European taken suddenly ill here would have to pay about £l2 “round,” or £4 direct, to go by schooner to the hospital; with no provi sion made for him when he arrived there!

Such a system—or lack of system?— needs replacing by social security ameni ties.

Such a patient would, I suppose, be treated, if the case were urgent. But the hospital has not even a pair of pyjamas ready for anyone suddenly arriving in a state of necessity. And it provides, even for accepted patients, no laundry service. This does not seem 100 per cent, efficiency.

The feeding of patients, however, is very satisfactory indeed; and if this were the standard set for all the other hos pital activities, the Rarotonga institution would incur more praise than it at present does.

I am, etc.,

E.G.

Mangaia, Cook Is.

April, 1945.