The thing about anniversaries of key events in the health world is that it can make you feel old. But the softener is that it can show how doomsday predictions often come to nought.
This month, there were two of those moments for me – the 10-year anniversary of the opening of Fiona Stanley Hospital, and the 15-year mark since the introduction of folate fortification in flour.
When FSH started its progressive opening in October 2014, there were wheels falling off everywhere. As the then-health reporter on our city’s morning newspaper, it was fodder from heaven.
Doctors’ mobile phones couldn’t get a signal because there was a hiccup in the telecoms set up and there were concerns about infection breaches involving surgical instruments.
Add to that, the promise of a paperless hospital turned out to be not worth the paper it was written on!
Critics labelled it a dysfunctional hospital that would continue to struggle.
Yet high demand withstanding – which seems the fate of all public hospitals – the hospital has delivered…and not just babies.
Critics labelled it a dysfunctional hospital that would continue to struggle. Yet high demand withstanding…the hospital has delivered.
Similarly, when a campaign to have flour fortified with folate – led by eminent child health researchers Professors Fiona Stanley and Carol Bower – gained traction in 2009, sections of the food industry said the world would stop revolving.
Today, no one thinks twice about the folate in their sandwich, but many children have been saved from devastating neural-tube birth defects.
Perhaps lessons could be learnt when it comes to doomsday predictions about the impact of vaping laws?