Child surgery delayed for adult ops, doctors say

Paediatric surgeons are warning that children's surgery is being delayed to facilitate adult surgery.

In the past year Wellington and Christchurch have not delivered the number of operations for children they had been contracted to do by the Government, essentially for the first time, Society of Paediatric Surgeons president Brendon Bowkett said yesterday.

Society members in Auckland had reported several list cancellations. Problems included a significant nursing shortage which had affected all centres and in Wellington there had been a cut in paediatric operating to facilitate adult surgery.

"We really are at the edge of the canyon with a lot of our kids. Many of them are waiting over a year for surgery, some 18 months," Mr Bowkett told National Radio.

Several acute elective admissions, if they could be called that, were flooding into city hospitals from provincial centres. Delays to children's surgery had been a problem for "quite a number of years", he said. Children had no real alternatives to the public health system, with private capacity in this country limited.

"What we really require is a restoration of paediatric operating time ... and we require really the implementation of a model across New Zealand in terms of providing provincial paediatric surgery that has already been developed in the South Island," Mr Bowkett said.

"The public health system in New Zealand has been a very good, cost-effective system and it needs to be supported. Children shouldn't be squeezed out of it.

"What our society is saying is that the cutbacks to children's surgery are not appropriate. We think adult operative initiatives and expansion is essential, but that has to stand on its own two legs."

- NZPA