Garth George: Infectious disease increase shameful

It comes as no surprise that there were 16 serious "incidents" (read accidents or mistakes) between July 1, 2010, and June 30 last year in the two hospitals run by the Bay of Plenty District Health Board.

Considering the thousands of in- and outpatient treatments and surgical operations carried out in those hospitals over the 12-month period, 16 seems to me an infinitesimal number.

However, accidents and mistakes that take place in hospitals tend to be either fatal, life-threatening or uncommonly painful, as witness the fact that three people died, a woman's ovary was mistakenly removed (instead of her appendix, if you please), and a swab was left inside a patient after surgery in the two hospitals in that time.

One thing that gives such incidents a greater emphasis is that they happen in a professional environment presided over by doctors and nurses whom we tend to place on a pedestal not much lower than angels.

Yet, being human, they are just as fallible as the rest of us and cannot be expected to operate to perfection day in and day out.

Particularly is this so when far too many of our highly-trained doctors and nurses shoot through to other countries where they can get much higher salaries and far better conditions than they can here.

I have long seen doctors as simply service providers, who are paid by the hour for their know-how and manual dexterity much like plumbers, electricians or IT technicians - except that they charge more.

Throughout the country there were 377 public hospital mishaps resulting in 86 deaths, many of which "should never have happened", according to a Health Quality and Safety Commission report released this week.

Once again, considering the tens - if not hundreds - of thousands of in- and outpatients treated, that seems a minuscule percentage when set against all the successful procedures which brought people new life and hope.

Of much graver concern is another report this week that shows hospitalisations from infectious diseases in New Zealand, some of which we thought we had seen the back of, have increased by 51 per cent from 1998 to 2008.

A study by the University of Otago, Wellington, published in the authoritative medical journal The Lancet, shows that the sufferers were mainly aged under 5 or over 70 and from lower socio-economic areas.

And, even worse, that some were suffering from Third World infections and skin abscesses; cellulitis and pneumonia were rife.

This is simply further evidence that our descent into the Third World, which began some 30-odd years ago, is proceeding apace.

Unsurprisingly, the lead investigator for the study, Associate Professor Michael Baker, blames the growing "gulf between the rich and poor" for the increase, which he labels, with massive understatement, embarrassing for the country.

The study says Maori and Pacific people were twice as likely to be hospitalised as Europeans.

Those in deprived neighbourhoods were almost three times at risk compared with those living in the most affluent areas.

Professor Baker said he was "taken aback" by the size of the increase, because he expected to see the normal developed world pattern of a rise in chronic diseases such as cancer and diabetes, and a decline in infections.

"New Zealand now has the double burden of rising rates of both infectious and chronic diseases.

"The increased rates are adding 17,000 hospitalisations a year and tens of millions of dollars in avoidable healthcare costs."

Professor Baker said the largest increase in infectious diseases occurred in the 1990s, in a period of rapidly rising income and wealth inequalities associated with major restructuring of the economy.

Overcrowding, lower rates of immunisation and poor access at an early age to primary care were drivers for people being hospitalised.

I'm not just embarrassed; I'm downright ashamed.

garth.george@hotmail.com