Tuesday, 24 May 2022

Albury Wodonga Health

Ms MAXWELL (Northern Victoria) (17:46): (1925) My adjournment is to the Minister for Health, and the action I seek is for the government to respond to the call from the Albury-Wodonga community for a new single-site hospital in their region. I thank the minister for publicly responding to my question of last sitting week when I invited him to meet with Better Border Health, the local working group of community members who are diligently campaigning for a new single-site hospital. I have been in touch with his office to make arrangements for this and look forward to the opportunity for this working group to share their views on what is needed to meet the healthcare needs of the region.

I attended the Better Border Health community rally on Sunday, 15 May, which was attended by more than 1000 people and showed just how important this issue is to the region. There might be differing opinions on the status of the master plan, but there is absolutely no disagreement in Albury-Wodonga about the need for a single-site regional hospital. This is a united call from doctors, nurses, allied health workers, patients, carers, the hospital board and the regional communities of Albury-Wodonga. The clinical services plan released in April 2021 recommends a single-site hospital, and the lived experience of patients backs this up 100 per cent.

If you are a woman in labour and you experience complications or your baby needs specialist paediatric care, you will have to wait for precious time—possibly half an hour, maybe longer—for an ambulance to be transported from Wodonga to Albury for this critical care. Postoperative patients like Sylvia Britt have recently had to spend two nights in the day unit without the appropriate facilities of a ward. Nurse Jeff Hudson told the rally that there is one toilet for every nine patients. The chair of the Border Medical Association, Dr Barbara Robertson, said, ‘Our hospital is too old, too small and too spread out’, and the wonderful staff are struggling to work in these conditions. Staff are left to take off contaminated personal protection equipment outside in the rain. Isolation rooms are compromised because air can leak through vents in the doors. A doctor spoke of resuscitating a newborn while unable to contact the paediatric registrar at the other site because of a mobile blackspot in the hospital, and Brad George spoke at the rally about having to lie down outside on a metal bench while he was having a heart attack.

Minister, I know you will agree that this is simply not good enough and the situation is urgent, made even more dire by the strain on our health system from the pandemic. We have had at least two code yellows declared this autumn. So, Minister, I say to you: we do not need a master plan to know that this community needs a new single-site hospital. We need a commitment for funding and a sign of hope for Better Border Health.