AN URGENT NEED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 157, 5 July 1937, Page 6

AN URGENT NEED.

I So impressed is the committee of inquiry into maternity services with the need for improvement in the country districts that it is considering the question of issuing an interim report, so that the most urgent cases may receive immediate attention. The acting-Prime Minister, the Hon. P. Fraser, is in full sympathy with the committtee, and on Saturday he indicated the intention to extend the St. Helens Hospital services to the country districts*and also to increase the backblocks nursing services. Mr. Fraser will find the whole community behind him here. It is not the great-hearted women pioneering the faraway settlements who practise birth control. They are nobly assisting to develop the country and at the same time they are assisting to populate it with a hardy, healthy race, under the most adverse conditions so far as childbirth is concerned. In some of the districts the nurses perform prodigies of endurance in their humanitarian efforts, but their numbers are far below requirements, and they are further handicapped by time, distance and the state of many of the roads. As the committee indicates, the need is urgent, and the fact that it is so evidently appreciated by Mr. Fraser will prove very comforting to the lonely women of the outback.