Mother wants Angie's death to count

By MARTIN JOHNSTON health reporter

Margaret Webster wants the death of her daughter Angie to count for something.

Angie died aged 15 in September 2000 while waiting for a heart operation.

The New Plymouth teenager had been put on a 12-to-18-month waiting list for an operation at Waikato Hospital to correct an abnormally fast heart rhythm.

But she died, after five months, from the build-up in her body of flecainide, a drug to control heart rhythm.

The Health and Disability Commissioner's office cleared her doctors, but the Hawera coroner recommended warnings for the drug's packaging.

Mrs Webster said Angie was young and she was still angry about her death. She describes hospital waiting lists as a death sentence and is setting up a support network of patients and their caregivers.

"I want change," she said. "If I can get some change Angie's died for a purpose. If I don't get changes she's died for nothing and she's just a Government statistic.

"There has to be change. We used to have one of the best health systems in the world and now it's Third World."

Mrs Webster wrote letters which appeared in newspapers around the country last week asking people who have suffered a loss like hers or who believe they are waiting too long for surgery to write to her.

"We will lobby the Government until something is done.

"When the Government was elected they promised they would cut the waiting list and they haven't." Health Minister Annette King agreed the Government has not fulfilled Labour's 1999 commitment to cut waiting times, but said it had improved the surgery booking system. It was now more transparent and the gaps in services, such as in orthopaedics, had been found.

But Ms King maintains New Zealand has a good health service.

Ministry elective services manager Brenda Bromell said it held no figures on how long patients waited nationally for elective surgery before the 1999 elections, so was unable make a comparison.

The volume of surgery done at public hospitals increased by 6 per cent in the four years from 1998/99. No breakdown between acute and elective surgery was available.

National associate health spokesman Paul Hutchison said the Government had failed to cut waiting times and the active review category obscured the problem.

* Mrs Webster can be contacted at 292B Carrington St, New Plymouth

Public hospital delays

* 33,600 patients in 1998/99 waited longer than the benchmark six months for elective (non-urgent) surgery.

* The figure dropped to about 12,000 in the last June year.

* But around 20,000 patients are under "active review" by a GP.

* The amount of acute and elective surgery increased from 151,663 cases (in 1998/99), to 160,901 (in 2002/03).