KEY POINTS:
A pitbull-cross dog attacked two women at the entrance to a hospital's children's department after it managed to break loose from its owner's home.
Middlemore Hospital in South Auckland is now urging the local community and council to address the stray dog problem, saying it treats dog bites
nearly every day.
The attacks - the first of which was at 7.05pm on Monday, the second 20 minutes later - follow the death of Murupara woman Virginia Ohlson, 56, who was savaged by a pitbull and a staffordshire-cross on April 22.
One of the Middlemore victims is understood to be a nurse although the hospital could not confirm this.
A witness, who did not want to be named, said the dog bit a middle-aged Indian woman as she walking away from the Kidz First children's hospital.
"I got here and I just parked my car and then I heard a dog barking at a car. It was running down the carpark. I saw it coming so I leapt in through the [hospital entrance] door.
"It was growling as it was coming. It bit her under her arm and then it bit her on the hand.
"The owner was running after it, trying to put a lead on it and then the dog bolted off down the way so that's when I called the police and the dog ranger."
The man said shocked onlookers ran to the woman's aid as he called police.
"It was panic. We're talking about a wild dog running around in the carpark with people everywhere. It was dark. I just couldn't believe it."
The witness said when he left the hospital at 8.30pm he heard the dog had attacked another woman.
"I was coming down the lift and the Island man that I was with, he said the doctor was just seeing his wife now and she'd been bitten 20 minutes later. It [the dog] actually came back again."
Last night Counties Manukau District Health Board spokeswoman Lauren Young confirmed staff at the hospital treated two people for bites.
"It is terrible and I am appalled this kind of thing is happening in a hospital. We don't expect to have feral dogs roaming around biting people."
Ms Young said the casualty unit dealt with dog bites from the area on an "almost daily basis".
Barry Gillingwater, managing director of DSS Animal Management, which contracts dog control services to the Manukau City Council, said it was likely the dog would be destroyed and its owners prosecuted.
The dog lived at a property about 4km away from the hospital and was usually kept in a secure yard but it broke out, Mr Gillingwater said.
A teenage boy from the family who owned the dog "gave chase" but not before the attacks.
Manukau City Mayor Sir Barry Curtis last night renewed calls to get rid of the aggressive breed.