Children with preventable respiratory illnesses are being re-admitted to hospital because they're being sent back to cold, damp homes, a Manawatu doctor says.
Jeff Brown says cold, damp homes are making kiwi kids sick. Photo: 123RF
The president-elect of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, Jeff Brown, said hospitals were getting busier and busier each winter.
Yesterday, Taranaki District Health Board said its 290 beds in New Plymouth and Hawera were all full, with wards at Waikato Hospital also packed.
But Dr Brown said that couldn't simply be attributed to more cases of flu.
He said the very young and the very old were most likely to end up in emergency departments, with preventable respiratory illnesses linked to poor housing.
Lack of insulation and ventilation can leave houses cold and damp during winter. Photo: 123rf
"We can have the best hospital system in the world, the best emergency departments in the world, but we help them recover and send them back to the same conditions."
Dr Brown works as a paediatrician at Palmerston North Hospital and he said he was seeing more children - and their siblings - being re-admitted within just a couple of weeks.
"They just bounce from one illness to the next - let alone the things like rheumatic fever that we still see - but these winter illnesses, we keep seeing the same kids coming back again and again, because we're sending them back to the same houses."