A burger a day...

Richard Baker
Insights Newsletter
3 November, 2017

Idiocy comes in many forms. Some people choose not to vaccinate their children.   Others think it better to extract multiple teeth from school children rather than have them drink fluoridated water. In some American states disturbed fantasists may openly carry loaded assault rifles in public, near schools and playgrounds.

In New Zealand, our latest idiocy is to deny gravely ill children and their stressed parents the succour and respite of special accommodation and rest at the hospital. I refer here to the recent decision of the Manukau District Health Board to refuse an offer of a Ronald McDonald House at Middlemore Hospital.

This thinking has found its way south where a lobby group is asking the Southern DHB to make the same decision for a rebuilt Dunedin Hospital. Accepting assistance from a purveyor of unhealthy food is unacceptable.

It is difficult to see how the cost-benefit ledger for this decision is anything but positive. In the credit column, desperately ill children and their parents get to stay together at a critical time. This means a lot.

I know. My daughter spent a week in the hospital in a serious condition and my wife and I were immensely grateful for the services at Ronald McDonald house. The DHB also gets to provide the highest level of care and convenience for patients and their families. In doing so, it saves millions of dollars.

In the debit column, it is a fast food provider who pays the bills. Put another way the “ban them” school of public thinking wants to teach a fast food company a lesson. What a gloriously meaningless gesture. Cannot New Zealanders be allowed to exercise their own judgment on the probity of who funds patient and parent care, especially when it is their children’s care at stake?

Over indulgence in fries, burgers and shakes is a poor health decision. As an occasional treat in a healthy lifestyle, it doesn’t harm the body or deaden the mind. We can rely on methamphetamine or reality television to do that. If we banned everything with a potential to harm from over-consumption baked beans would have to be the first to go.

Let us hope that the Manukau DHB revisits, resists and repairs this extremist thinking and that wiser southern heads reject the Dunedin proposal. Empty and harmful gestures may be useful in politics but please keep them away from our children.

Stay in the loop: Subscribe to updates