BY JIM MCILROY
BRISBANE — I have recently experienced a serious operation within the public health system of Queensland. After a period of angina I was referred for cardiac investigation to the Prince Charles hospital in the northern suburbs of Brisbane. Following an angiogram, and some complications, I was eventually accepted as an inpatient for urgent heart bypass surgery.
The entire experience has convinced me more strongly than ever that we need to defend and extend the public health system of Australia. Despite all the delays and extended waiting lists, the staff shortages and bureaucratic problems of the public hospital system and the broader national health system, Medicare, our national public health system is crucial to the interests of working people and the community.
The skills, dedication and care provided by the medical and support staff at the Prince Charles hospital were an inspiration to me. Professionalism and patient care are the watchwords of all the staff at the hospital, from the surgeons and other doctors, to the nurses, wardspeople and other support staff.
And under the public health system, a serious operation such as a heart bypass costing some $20,000, is still available free of charge to public patients. The fact that in our free-market dominated economy, overwhelmingly subject to the private profit motive in all areas of society, a little patch of socialism can exist in the form of our beleaguered public health system is a shining ray of light in the gloom.
The Prince Charles hospital "has the largest cardiac unit in Australia and one of the largest in the world. It is the key provider of heart-related medical services, teaching and research for Queensland, northern New South Wales, northern Australia and many large area of the Pacific region", according to a brochure published by the Prince Charles hospital foundation.
"It is one of the world's most advanced teaching hospitals for heart-related surgery.
"Each year approximately 15,000 patients are admitted to the Prince Charles hospital and over 100,000 patients are treated through the outpatients department. It is the only hospital in Queensland that provides medical and surgical treatment for children with cardiac disease."
Public hospitals such as Prince Charles deserve our full support.
The historic gain represented by our public hospital system and the national health system of which it is a key part is both a precious achievement resulting from decades of struggle by a working people, and a small, partial liberated zone of socialism in a sea of privatisation and corporate domination.
Speaking to the hard-working nurses in the cardiac wards at Prince Charles and observing the long hours and difficult shifts they must do gave me further insight into the need to support the Queensland nurses' wage and conditions claim.
In summary, we must give high priority to the defence of the public hospital and Medicare system, not only in the immediate interests of the community, but as a tiny inkling of the possibilities of a socialist future when public ownership and provision of services can be raised to the level of society as a whole.
From Green Left Weekly, January 15, 2003.
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