By Jono Hutchison
It's being called a ‘common sense’ solution but it took 55,000 petitioners to achieve it.
Dunedin is keeping its neurosurgery service; a reversal of a controversial plan to shift it to Christchurch.
Casey Coombes needed emergency brain surgery at Dunedin Hospital after a serious car accident.
She doesn't think she would have survived a two-hour flight to Christchurch, and is relieved other patients will now also get local treatment.
“Dunedin has a population of 300,000 and it's unacceptable for them not to be able to have an acute service and that was the critical thing the time element,” says acting director-general of Dunedin Hospital Andrew Bridgeman.
And not only will neurosurgery services stay – they will be enhanced.
The two locums there will be replaced by three neurosurgeons; two of whom will also hold academic positions at Otago University School of Medicine.
“So without the university's involvement I think it would be dead and buried; with university it really adds the possibility of making this, again, an icon of neurosurgery as it once was many years ago,” says professor Andrew Kaye.
The new South Island neurosurgery service will see a total of eight neurosurgeons based in Christchurch and Dunedin.
The plan was recommended by an expert panel brought in by warring district health boards that couldn't agree on who should run a centralised neurosurgery unit.
“This has been seen as a battle between two cities which is sad,” says vice chancellor of University of Otago, professor David Skegg.
The battle created huge debate in the south; the Canterbury DHB wanted the entire service in Christchurch.
But 55,000 southlanders signed a petition to save the Dunedin service, and thousands turned out for marches and public meetings.
Including Casey Coombes. She says she is “stoked and quite amazed” that the service will stay in Dunedin.
In the end, the expert panel concluded centralising services in Christchurch would be more expensive and would lead to more deaths.
But with just 20 neurosurgeons in the country, an urgent international recruitment drive is now underway to find the expertise to make the plan a reality.
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