Terrorist attack 'would push NZ hospital system over its limit'

By CATHERINE MASTERS

A big terrorist attack on New Zealand soil would push New Zealand's struggling hospital system past breaking point.

Surgeons in New Zealand and Australia want immediate action from both Governments after the Bali bombing stretched Australian hospitals to the limit, highlighting a serious lack of funding and planning on both sides of the Tasman.

The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons' warning comes just days after Osama bin Laden's chilling threat to take reprisal action against countries which support America's war on terror, as New Zealand and Australia do.

Auckland Hospital's head of trauma, Ian Civil, said a handful of severely injured patients would put immense pressure on the system.

Any more than that and the hospital would not cope.

Yesterday, not even 15 intensive care unit beds were available throughout the country.

Mr Civil, also chairman of the college's New Zealand trauma committee, has just returned from a trauma conference in Australia which was called in response to the Bali bombing.

Even though the Australians had a better system than New Zealand did, Australia had been stretched to the limit by the bombing, he said.

Dozens of patients suffering a range of severe injuries, especially burns, had to be accommodated in the hospital system and needed ongoing acute care.

Middlemore Hospital intensive care specialist David Galler said the South Auckland hospital was almost at breaking point anyway with everyday cases and in a disaster it would be "completely stuffed".

"There's no question if we had something like a Bali here we would be pushed over the limit.

"From a disaster point of view our health service runs on the edge all the time - just in everyday business we're millimetres away from disaster. We walk a knife-edge here every day."

Terrorism in New Zealand was a possibility and a responsible organisation like a hospital which picked up the carnage had to take threats, such as the one from Osama bin Laden, seriously.

Prime Minister Helen Clark has said New Zealand did not need to increase its security precautions following bin Laden's warning - but the warning had to be taken seriously.

She was unavailable for comment on the surgeons' warning yesterday.

The College of Surgeons' trauma committee chairman, Associate Professor Peter Danne, said Governments might not have long to fix things up.

A United States analysis of responses to terrorism showed it was critically important to have an integrated trauma system established in regions where terrorism was a possibility.

"In New Zealand and Australia integrated trauma systems are still in their infancy and are deficient."

In Australia the Defence Force had some capacity to mount an immediate medical response. New Zealand did not and this added to the concern.

Both Governments must act immediately to find out what and where the problems were, to assess the ability of individual hospitals and regions to cope and to start an integrated trauma system, he said.

The ministry's acting deputy director-general clinical services, Frances Hughes, said any disaster on the scale of the Bali bombing in New Zealand would severely stretch health services.

Ministry officials were willing to meet the Royal Australasian College to discuss improving New Zealand's emergency planning processes and capabilities, she said.