PRIMITIVE FACILITY

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 54, Issue 15, 28 October 1933, Page 8

PRIMITIVE FACILITY

TRAINING IN OBSTETRICS. MODERN HOSPITAL NECESSARY. (Per Press Association). STRATFORD, October 27. Commenting upon the discussion when the deputation of Otago members waited on the Ministers of Finance and Health in reference to the obstetrical hospital, Dr. Doris Gordon said that the statement credited to the Minister of Health that the request for a hospital was a comparatively recent development arising since the establishment of the chair of obstetrics was not correct nor indicative of Mr Young's interest in the welfare of women and children.

The chair of obstetrics, said Dr. Gordon, was established on May 1, 1930, when the women of New Zealand handed over a cheque for £25,000, but so far back as September, 1928, MiYoung received the executive of the Obstetrical Society, and discussed in an informal way the possibility of securing a hospital. Although unable to offer any financial assistance the Minister had given helpful advice and was keenly interested in. the liossibility of enlisting the help of women to raise finance either for the construction of a hospital or the endowment of a professorial chair. The first official request to Parliament for this hospital was made in February, 1929, by a deputation appointed at a gathering of more than 100 New Zealand graduates of medicine to convey to the Minister of Health the pressing need that this hospital should be made up to date and brought into line with similar institutions overseas. These graduates came from all over the Dominion and represented every branch of medical art, and the majority of them had no immediate interest in the practice of obstetrics yet they were unanimous in their request that the one blot on the New Zearand Medical School, the primitive obstetrical teaching facilities, should immediately be remedied. This deputation was sympathetically received by the Minister of Health of that date, Mr A. J. Stallworthy, and in August, 1929, it was announced that the Government had sanctioned a grant for the hospital. "It was only after the Cabinet made this decision," said l Dr. Gordon, "that the Obstetrical Society shaped the endowment appeal which culminated in the endowment of the obstetrical chair."