Plunket Day

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20955, 8 September 1933, Page 8

Plunket Day

Christchurch has so warmly syinpa-

thised with the objects of the Plunket Society and so steadily responded to the annual appeal of the district branch that it is easy to be confident of success to-day. But if that success is to be of the order that the society deserves, every giver in the street collection and buyer at tine stalls will have to feel more than a disposition to help; they will have to feel how great is the need for help, and proportion their generosity jto it. The branch began last year's work with a balance-sheet showing a deficit. This, through an anonymous benefactor's gift of £125 and the splendid result of Plunket Day. was wiped off; but the branch is not free of anxiety. It is bound to maintain services already very wide in scope; and it is bound, so far and so soon as it can, to extend them. Last year, more than 60,000 visits were paid to tho Plunket rooms in the Christchurch are'a; and the nurses paid nearly 8000 visits to mothers' i homes. In addition, in the pre-natal section, they gave first interviews to 305 mothers, who returned to the clinic on 1877 occasions, they visited 57 homes, and the monthly average of cases under observation was 110 and of new cases 25. In the postnatal section, throughout the whole area, 1536 new cases received attention. All this was done—or rather, all that this implies was done, all the increase of health and happiness that, it brought was won—for an expenditure of less than £4OOO. I'ut the income and expenditure accorn'. shows that, apart from the Government subsidy of £llOB and ;< trifle of interest every penny of this money had to come in one way or another from the public, by subscription or gift or purchase of K?aritane products; and that the Plunket Day collection is of, quite literally, vital importance. It is not enough, therefore, to say that to-day's appeal gives citizens an opportunity to show their goodwill towards the Plunket cause. It is an opportunity to express their sense of responsibility to it.