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Middlemore Hospital postpones hundreds of surgeries to focus on White Island victims

December 20, 2019

Local iwi Ngāti Awa extended its rāhui on the search area this morning, TVNZ’s Nicole Bremner reports.

Hundreds of surgeries are expected to be postponed as Auckland's Middlemore Hospital struggles under the pressure of treating victims of the Whakaari/White Island eruption.

More than 200 elective surgeries have already been delayed in the 10 days since the eruption, Counties Manukau's John Cartwright says.

"We expect to continue to postpone surgeries at the same rate after the new year, which means by the end of January we expect to have postponed potentially more than 600 surgeries."

Middlemore Hospital is home to the National Burn Service, with burn centres also at Waikato, Hutt Valley and Christchurch hospitals.

Together they've seen more burns from White Island than they usually see in a year.

Defence Force special operations component commander Rian McKinstry talked about the challenges soldiers faced Friday.

It's not just the sheer number, but the severity of the burns that's causing issues. Some critically injured patients suffered burns on up to 90 per cent of their body.

Mr Cartwright says treating them takes hours in the operating theatres, across multiple days with large surgical and anaesthetic teams.

"Because this group of patients are a more urgent group, we have had to prioritise almost four times the level of surgical resources than we might normally expect at this time of year, and all of our critical care," he says.

Dr Peter Watson, Chief Medical Officer at Counties Manukau Health said many have very serious injuries.

"The additional pressure on our services has severely impacted our ability to carry out our planned elective surgery, and we apologise to those whose surgery may have been, or will need to be, deferred till a later date."

To try and cope with the onslaught, some other patients are being referred to Waitematā or Auckland hospitals instead in the short-term.

Mr Cartwright says it's not ideal, but "under these circumstances, we can't do it alone".

Specialist teams from Britain, the US and Australia have offered help as clinicians in NZ work around the clock.

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