Letter to the Editor: Possible new Denmark medical centre an ideal move for ageing residents

This photograph is taken on the proposed site for a new Denmark Medical Centre.

The buildings in the photograph were constructed from 1942 to 1943 and were still there when I bought my first land in Denmark in 1961.

Since the demolition there are now three medium-size eucalyptus trees which have regenerated on the site, occupying a very small portion of the parkland surrounding the hospital.

I believe as a long-time local we are extremely lucky to have attracted a group of local doctors, all residents of Denmark and led by Alex Sleeman, who are committed to the town to the extent they will put their money on the table for a much-needed facility that I doubt WA Country Health Service will ever provide.

The evidence is that for the town with the oldest average age in the State, the government has built a small hospital and nursing home 12 years ago and still has not provided us with a doctor.

Without private input we could die waiting.

Without the doctors’ personal financial input we would not be in a position to fund the proposed facility, as was with the previous case of the airport, where I had made enough profit of developing building lots in the town to be able to contribute over $2 million in 1995 to construct the Denmark airport. Otherwise we would not have water-bombers or the Royal Flying Doctor Service we now take for granted.

To have specialist consulting rooms adjacent to the hospital will avoid people of my age having to take people, as I did with my wife of 56 years unable to walk suffering from a stroke, to specialist appointments in Albany assisted by a strong carer and a wheelchair from the hospital and Blue Wren nursing home.

In the future this could be avoided with specialist consulting rooms with wheelchair access immediately adjacent to the best nursing home in the State (impossible to achieve in any alternate location).

I encourage my local community to get behind this project. None of us are immune to sickness or old age, and the benefits for the future growth and wellbeing of the town are obvious.

Therefore as a community contribution, the land should be granted free of cost to the project to enable all the financial contribution of the doctors to go entirely into creating, with the latest technology, a lifesaving facility for all of us.

The shire would gain the benefit of commercial rates on the facility forever from land that currently earns them nothing.

Graeme Robertson

Denmark

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