Starship begins campaign for specialised x-ray machine

By MARTIN JOHNSTON

Jasper Uluave recalls the pain when the ball of her left hip broke. "It was really sore. I was really in pain," the 10-year-old said yesterday, sitting in a wheelchair at the Starship children's hospital in Auckland.

"I was jogging to the playground and I tripped on my pants - they're flared - and I slipped.

"I couldn't stand up. I was crying," the Onehunga Primary School pupil said.

She had surgery last Wednesday. Yesterday she helped publicise a Mercury Energy-Starship Foundation campaign to raise $200,000 to buy a specialised x-ray machine.

The hospital has two of the machines but one is old and needs to be replaced and high demand for the other sometimes delays children's operations for a day or two.

The clinical director of paediatric orthopaedics, Stewart Walsh, said Jasper was recovering well from surgery, but it would be months before the full outcome was known.

Two screws were placed in the ball of her left hip, reconnecting it to the rest of the thigh bone, and one in the right, which had slipped but not broken off.

Pacific Island and Maori children have the highest prevalence in the world of slippage of the thigh bone growth plate.

They are respectively 5.6 and 4.2 times more likely than Pakeha children to be admitted to the Starship with the condition. "It's a huge difference," said a paediatric orthopaedic surgeon, Associate Professor Susan Stott.

The causes of the condition are not known, but it runs in families and is linked with obesity, with greater weight putting more stress on the growth plate.

Forty per cent of Maori children and 60 per cent of Pacific children are overweight or obese, compared with 24 per cent of Pakeha and other children.

Starship Foundation trustee and television star Lucy Lawless became the first Mercury Energy customer to sign up to a donation scheme to raise money for a new mobile image intensifier.

Under the Mercury scheme, customers can donate $2 or more each month through their power bills. The company yesterday donated $35,000 towards the cost of the new machine.

Fixing bones

* The $200,000 mobile image intensifier provides immediate, detailed pictures on computer-type screens to help surgeons to drill holes, place screws and insert catheters.

* The x-ray machine also allows surgeons to perform operations through tiny incisions, making treatment faster and more efficient.