7/28/2019 Oh Really Save Our Hospital! Hospitals Save Lives!
1/2
Oh Really? Save Our Hospital! Hospitals Save Lives!
This may well be true. Hospitals are instituted to restore
people to health and even to savelives. This is the argument
brought forward by those who protest the closure of country
hospitals for budgetary reasons. Yet, the argument is
considerably weakened when the
success rates are measured against the real figures. The
Australia based HealthRoundtable has concluded that many (detailed
figures are not available in the public
domain) preventable deaths occur in hospitals. TheNew Zealand
Herald, on September
17, 2012, reported candidly on the concern with which District
Health Boards wrestleregarding this phenomenon. The number of lives
actually saved through hospital
intervention is hard to gauge, but the number of deaths in
hospitals that could be
prevented is significant. Reports theNew Zealand Herald:
"So-called "in-hospital" deaths
within 30 days of admission number nearly 8000 patients each
year, around 1.5 per centof all people admitted to hospital,
including day patients."
Now, it is a given that where people work, people make mistakes
and, in the case of
health care, such mistakes may result in death. This does not
mean that we should notencourage hospitalization for those who need
it. However, the argument that 'hospitals
save lives' becomes harder to maintain as entirely credible.
Of far greater concern to this author is the other activity in
which hospitals engage, an
activity which definitely puts paid to the protesters' argument
that 'hospitals save lives.' InAustralia alone (and this is not a
nation with a large population), the number of clinically
performed abortions number above 90 000 per year. This does not
include the aborting of
babies through other means such as the morning-after pill. In
the USA more than 1.2
million children were aborted according to the 2008 figures. In
New Zealand just under16 000, Europe can pride itself in committing
4.2 million clinical abortions (2008
figures). According to statistics the pro rata percentages are
pretty much the samethroughout the Western world. These figures
would cause one to declare that it appearsthat the termination of
lives in hospitals actually far outweighs the saving of lives.
It is ironic - I would say even oxymoronic - that at the same
time all these massacreshappen, politicians and social scientists
express concern that the population is becoming
increasingly grey. This in turn places immense pressure on
national budgets as there are
not enough young people to keep the economy turning over and put
enough money in the
Inland Revenue kitty. If the feminist agenda regarding the
woman's self-determinationwere reversed, many a nation would be
rejuvenated and many concomitant social ills
would be ameliorated. In saying this, I am not glossing over the
tragedy of unwanted
pregnancies, especially in the case of rape (it would seem to me
that death would bepreferable to such an invasion of privacy - an
entirely personal, emotional perception
which the reader is welcome to dispute). In deciding upon an
abortion, however, at least
two persons suffer tragically, i.e. the woman who is being raped
and the innocent childwhich has been conceived as a result. In such
a case, I would like to promote the slogan I
read during an anti-abortion rally which read 'Adoption, not
Abortion' (acknowledging
that much government red tape makes adoption sometimes difficult
and expensive; still
much to be chosen over abortion).
7/28/2019 Oh Really Save Our Hospital! Hospitals Save Lives!
2/2
The notion that human life is holy still resonates in our
society, even though people do
not own the concept rationally in many cases. It shows, for
instance, in the manner newsreports report tragic road accidents,
the death of a teenager during post-school exam
celebrations, the effort made to rebuild the damage done to a
person in a fire through
plastic surgery, the efforts made to find those bush walkers who
are lost, the mercyflights to take people out of ravaged areas hit
by volcanic eruptions or cyclones. The list
goes on. Nary is a cost spared to save human lives in difficult
circumstances. Yet,
simultaneously young children are routinely killed, then burnt
in designer ovens athospitals. (One friend of mine left his job as
a mechanic at one hospital in New Zealand
when he discovered, while clearing ashes in an oven receptacle,
many small-sized human
remains; he actually threw up right there and then.)
Genesis 1:26-27 relates that God created man in Hisimage and
likeness: And God said,Let us make man in our image, after our
likeness: and let them have dominion over the
fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the
cattle, and over all the earth, and
over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God
created man in his ownimage, in the image of God created he him;
male and female created he them.
The idea of human dignity, that we are created in the image of
God (1:27), supports the
theological basis for the sanctity of human life, human
equality, and the fundamental
principle of liberty in any Christian civilization. Man is still
aware of God; Gods imagebearing influence still works in all. It
shows in body language, spoken language (see my
previous essayKeep Your Fingers Crossed), in the manner that
people react when some
one suffers or dies in catastrophes. That man is also a fallen
creature is evident, for
instance, in the inconsistency displayed where unborn children
are concerned. In an effortto play down or dismiss the fact that
from the moment of conception children are actually
just that, descriptions such as foetus and embryo are efforts to
obfuscate what doctors are
really dealing with in an abortion theatre.
Hospitals save lives. Perhaps they do, but statistical evidence
shows that they are more
the institutions of death than the restorers of life in our day
and age. This may well comeas a surprise, and so it should. In a
world where a United Nations outfit tries to do away
with death and misery, most of the member states engage in daily
murder of its citizens.
In the country from which I come (another guilty nation in this
context) there is the
saying: If you wish to improve the world, start with sweeping
your own door step.Would it not be wonderful if we could declare
with statistically backed truth that, indeed,
hospitals save lives?
A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.
(Carl Sandburg, American Poet, 1878-1967)
Dr Herm JG Zandman
4/06/2013
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/c/carlsandbu103421.htmlhttp://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/c/carlsandbu103421.htmlhttp://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/c/carlsandbu103421.htmlhttp://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/carl_sandburg.htmlhttp://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/carl_sandburg.htmlhttp://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/c/carlsandbu103421.html
