Committee Recommends Three Hospitals

Instead Of One.

——–

OPPOSITION TO REPORT MANIFESTS ITSELF

——–

One Hospital Urged To Be

Located At Hot Springs,

South Dakota.

——–

New Ulm apparently had no look-in for the new federal hospital to be erected for the treatment of tubercular World War veterans of the Northwest, because according to press dispatches from Washington the committee in charge of selecting sites has made its report to General Hines without inspecting the sites New Ulm had to offer. New Ulm had submitted a number of sites, but the committee did not even find it convenient to visit the city and make a personal inspection of the sites New Ulm could offer. Possibly other cities who were in the field for the hospital were treated fully as shabbily.

Three Hospitals Recommended.

According to the press dispatches, the committee on sites recommended the erection of two new hospitals,one in Minnesota and one in North Dakota and an enlargement of the Battle Mountain Sanitarium at Hot Springs, South Dakota. The federal appropriation for tuberculosis hospitals for the Tenth District is $1,200,000. It was originally planned to have one hospital built at a place to be selected by the committee on sites. The committee, however, recommended that more than one hospital should be erected, so as to give the patients an opportunity to be as near home as possible.

One at Blooming Prairie.

The committee recommends the erection of a 300-bed hospital at Blooming Prairie, with a site at Wales, Minnesota, a 200-bed hospital at Hector, North Dakota, which is but a short distance from Fargo, N. D. and a 150-bed addition to the Battle Mountain Sanitarium at Hot Springs, South Dakota. The sites for the new hospitals would cost respectively $69,000and $75,000.

Over 2,000

Tubercular Veterans.

According to Col. Seaman who is chairman of the committee on sites,there were in the district up to October 1, 1924, fully 2,243 veterans in the several stages of tuberculosis. Besides that many cases have been treated outside of the state. General Hines,director of the Veteran’s bureau and chairman of the hospitalization board,declared in an interview that the leased hospitals in St. Paul and Minneapolis should be abandoned as soon as possible, because proper care could not be given the veterans in these institutions.

Recommendation of

Committee Opposed.

It is already apparent, that opposition to the recommendation of the committee will manifest itself. The South Dakota delegation in Congress has already expressed itself as strongly opposed to the committee recommendation for divided hospitals, contending that the government should concentrate its efforts for the relief of tubercular veterans at one place and that Hot Springs, South Dakota, is the logical place for such a hospital, because the climate at Hot Springs is best adapted to the cure of tubercular cases. It is also argued that on account of the cheap building materials available in the mountains near Hot Springs, that the construction costs would be much lower there than anywhere else.

What the eventual outcome will be with the opposition that has already manifested itself, is hard to forecast. That the hospital or hospitals will be built and completed this year is almost a foregone conclusion, unless government officials will want to continue to jeopardize the lives of the tubercularly afflicted veterans in this district.

New Ulm Review,

Jan. 21, 1925

————————