Minister says people unsure if hospital is a public or private facility, after staff call it a ‘monument to a quack’

Brisbane’s four-year-old Lady Cilento Children’s hospital is to be renamed the Queensland Children’s hospital, at a cost of up to $500,000.

Queensland’s health minister, Steven Miles, announced the change on Friday, saying it would clear up confusion about whether the hospital was a public or private facility. “This process started with a request from the doctors,” Miles said.

The hospital was originally named after Phyllis Dorothy Cilento, a doctor and medical journalist, whom Miles said would now be honoured in another way.

Staff call for hospital renaming over Lady Cilento's racist and homophobic views Read more

He said staff had raised concerns about the impact of the name on their involvement in international research projects, and a survey showed most parents did not know it was a public hospital.

However, last month medical staff told Guardian Australia the building was a “monument to a quack”, named after a woman with a history of racist and homophobic commentary who argued that children could catch diseases from “coloured” nurses.

As “Medical Mother” and “Mother MD”, Cilento wrote columns for Brisbane’s Courier-Mail and for women’s magazines. In one 1953 column, she described homosexuals as part of a “cult” and a “malignant tumour” on the national life. In 1944, she wrote that “it would not be in the best interests of children ... to be cared for by coloured labour”.

Children should not be “in close contact with people of lower standards of life and utterly different standards of moral conduct”, she wrote, and: “Practically all Asiatic and Melanesian races are walking reservoirs of tropical diseases.”

About 900 staff signed a petition calling for a change to the hospital’s name, which was chosen by the Liberal National party government in 2013.

Miles’s announcement on Friday was met with derision from conservative politicians and outrage from the Cilento family. Her son David called it “devastating”.

ABC Brisbane (@abcbrisbane) Lady Cilento's son David is not happy about his mother's name being removed from the children's hospital.https://t.co/6uYfjvDKs9#Qldpol pic.twitter.com/VT5tLQOT8c

“There’s no better way, in my opinion, or no worse way, of permanently damaging a person’s reputation than publicly expunging her name from a building,” he said. “It’s extraordinary.”

The LNP MP Jarrod Bleijie accused Miles and the premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, of “trashing the reputation of a pioneering woman”.

Jarrod Bleijie (@JarrodBleijieMP) Lady Cilento Children's Hospital is the latest casualty of politics of spite! Shame on @StevenJMiles & Annastacia for trashing the reputation of a pioneering woman who gave so much to Queensland. #qldpol https://t.co/tg4U7gNg4C

Most of Cilento’s work was focused on the health and wellbeing of mothers and their children, and some of her views came to be considered ahead of their time. She advocated for natural childbirth and family planning, and encouraged people to take vitamins.

Miles said: “It is the government’s sincere wish that we can reach an agreement with [her family] about an appropriate alternative to properly recognise Lady Cilento and her contribution to Queensland.”

The estimated cost of changing the hospital signage is expected to be less than $500,000, and will be funded by the Department of Housing and Public Works. Stationery and uniform changes will be implemented over time.

with Australian Associated Press



