A WOMEN'S health unit, which operates from what is often described as "a tin shed," played an important part in the success of the campaign to have St George Hospital rebuilt.
The many politicians who were shown through the two small, attached demountable buildings were amazed at the work being done in the cramped, crowded conditions.
About 6500 outpatients a year attend the Pelvic Floor Unit to seek help for urinary and faecal incontinence.
Patients are referred from a wide area of Sydney as well as the southern half of NSW and the ACT.
The unit has 14 staff while about 200 medical students a year from the University of NSW undertake training rotations.
Professor Kate Moore, an eminent urogynaecologist, started the unit in 1992 after studying the specialty in Britain for eight years and managed to stay positive despite the challenging conditions.
"We have a very motivated team who are absolutely dedicated to their patients and therefore the unit functions to a high degree," she said.
"However, the constant pressure of inadequate space is extremely frustrating.
"We try to make things cheerful, with pictures on the wall and that sort of thing, but it is makeshift and everything is crammed."
Professor Moore said she thought visits by various federal and state MPs had contributed to the drive to upgrade the hospital.
"But we are down the line a bit [in order of priority]," she said.
Professor Moore said she hoped consideration would be given to relocating the unit as quickly as possible.
"Urinary incontinence is a sort of Cinderella subject in that it tends to be ignored and swept under the carpet when it deserves a lot of attention," she said.
"A lot more research in the last two or three decades means there are a great many more treatments available and cures often occur.
"Patients are coming out of the woodwork and seeking help for something that used to be a disgusting, shameful taboo."
Professor Moore said, by comparison, a similar unit in the Mercy Hospital in Melbourne was "luxurious".
"They have large, carpeted waiting rooms and individual consultation rooms, a meeting room, separate tea room and other staff facilities and it is airconditioned."
The state government allocated funding in last month's budget to commence stage one of the rebuild, which will follow on from the opening of a new emergency department in October.
Health Minister Jillian Skinner said she anticipated the first stage would be completed by the end of the government's next four-year term.
HUMBLE START
The Pelvic Floor Unit started in 1992 in a former nurses’s toilets and change room block, adjoining old operating theatres.
It was relocated two years later to a demountable building, which had been used to store kitchen supplies.
A second portable building was attached in about 2000.
Limitations include a tiny waiting room, small and poorly ventilated consulting rooms, inadequate areas for expensive equipment and lack of storage for files and the unit’s research studies, which are published throughout the world.
Have you been helped at the Women's health unit?
