Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1941. THE PLUNKET SOCIETY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 283, 11 September 1941, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1941. THE PLUNKET SOCIETY.

For the second time the Ashburton branch of, the Plunket Society will make its annual appeal for funds under war conditions and though the immediate need is the furtherance of the Dominion’s war effort the wastage of viriP human life as an effect of hostilities throws into increased prominence the need for the preservation of infant life and invests the operations of the Society with increased importance. It would be difficult to name any comparably useful institution in the Dominion, perhaps even in the Empire, which has accomplished so much good in the interests of humanity and of the general community. The Society represents a movement which has had an effect little short of extraordinary in its special sphere, that of the protection of the health of women and children at a most critical lime for both. The statistics which most arrestingly bear evidence of the benefits of the Society’s work are often quoted, but remain a source of pride to the Dominion. They show that the infant mortality rate has been reduced within the three decades of the Society’s existence from 69 deaths per thousand births to 32 (for the quinquennial period 1935-39), while the maternal mortality rate, 3.25, upon which the activities of the Plunket Society have some bearing, is also a low one. At the present day, more than ever, the activities of the Society are of paramount importance, for the instruction given to mothers and the actual care of babies at a critical period of their lives must improve the stamina of the coming generation, so that, physically sound, they may be adequately equipped mentally to meet the problems, the difficulties and the labours of ( the future. It would be a dismal pessimism that doubted that the world will not have advanced far in the betterment of international and national in the reconstruction after the war, when the babies of to-day take their place among the moulders .of public thought and the leaders of public action, but there can be no question that continuance of that progress will be secured only if the race is endowed with all those qualities that primarily derive their strength from physical fitness. Thus the appeal to be made to-morrow should receive the generous support of all who realise that one of the duties imposed upon each generation is to endeavour to improve the conditions under which those who follow have to live.