Hospital battled polio in new way

The Duncan Hospital on Wanganui's Durie Hill which rehabilitated polio patients has long gone, but the trust that pioneered the hospital's polio treatments continues the philanthropic legacy of its founders, Sir Thomas and Lady Duncan.

Tomorrow Vicky and David Duncan will open their home to celebrate the launch of the Duncan family book, Otiwhiti Station - the story of a hill country station and pioneering polio hospital.

Book royalties will support post-polio sufferers treated at the Duncan Hospital who now need help again after their symptoms returned. Mrs Duncan said their wheelchairs were old and motorised ones were needed.

Mr Duncan, the grandson of Sir Thomas and Lady Duncan, is the chairman of the trust that carries his grandparents' name.

There were hard times on the land, but with the sale of Otiwhiti in 2006 back into the Duncan family, the trust was flush again and invested the charity's proceeds into the financial markets.

The Sir Thomas and Lady Duncan Trust will donate $300,000 over the next three years to the Brainwave Trust Aotearoa, to educate students from Year 7 through to Year 13 in the Wanganui, Manawatu and Rangitikei regions on the development of infants' brains in the first three years.

The original Mr and Mrs TA Duncan Hospital Trust pioneered the successful Sister Kenny treatment programme for those with polio (infantile paralysis) at the Duncan Hospital.

There were two Duncan Hospitals; the first was at Silverstream, which was closed and put up for sale, and the services relocated to Puke Tiro on Durie Hill in 1953.

The trust provided funding from the Turakina Valley farm so patients could receive free treatment.

The book tells the stories of those people who were patients or worked at the Duncan Hospital, and of the men and women who worked on the farm to produce the profits to support the trust's work.

Mrs Duncan said the hospital treatments broke new ground and the Health Department of the time had to be persuaded that the Sister Kenny treatment was not quackery.

Sister Kenny, an Australian bush nurse, championed a revolutionary treatment technique the trust fought hard to obtain local recognition for, as Sister Kenny did internationally.

In the 1960s the battle with polio was won with the introduction of a vaccine, so the trust decided that the hospital's top-rate facilities and expertise could also be used for other disorders and injuries.

In 1971, the trust negotiated with the Wanganui Base Hospital and the health board and the services were expanded to include rheumatoid arthritis sufferers and hemiplegics, as well as children suffering from cerebral palsy, spina bifida and Still's disease (juvenile idiopathic arthritis). It also included those who had suffered an accident.

But by the mid-'70s, farming fell on hard times and the trustees faced falling profits and escalating hospital costs.

Closure of Duncan Hospital was imminent, an action committee was formed and a petition mounted.

But despite the efforts of many in Wanganui, on March 30, 1979, the hospital was closed, and Puke Tiro was eventually sold.