Policy On Use Of Contraceptive Pills

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29853, 20 June 1962, Page 2

Policy On Use Of Contraceptive Pills

The usage of oral contraceptives was discussed at the first full meeting to be held by the medical advisory committee of the New Zealand Family Planning Association, when the association’s sixth biennial conference was held recently in Wellington.

A statement issued at the meeting, and endorsed by the full conference, made the following points: Oral contraceptives will be reviewed as further knowledge comes to light. Those at present available are definitely not to be recommended for long-term use where other methods are applicable. They may be the treatment of choice for certain shortterm indications and where other methods are not suitable and pregnancy is definitely not advisable on medical grounds, they are to be preferred. Oral contraceptives will be prescribed only by clinic

doctors with the consent of the family practitioner.

•'The introduction of oral contraceptives has been an event of the first magnitude in the affairs of the United Kingdom Family Planning Association, which is conducting training courses for doctors in this method.” said the Director-General of Health (Dr. H. B. Turbott), who opened the conference.

He outlined Government programmes in India and Japan, where family planning is first priority in Government health' programmes. If the death rate in India could be lowered to that of the United States, it was expected that the population would increase to 625 million by 1976. It was estimated that there would be 12 million unemployed.

Dr. Turbott said that there were now 57 countries belonging to the International Planned Parenthood Federation, which had as its objectives to build better lives for children, and to give parents knowledge of family planning and spacing to enable nations to keep production up with reproduction. The aims of the New Zealand Family Planning Association to offer the mothers of New Zealand the freedom to choose the number of children they would have were outlined by the president i Dr. Alice Bush) in her address.

Continued progress toward the goal of the association had been made during the last two years, but there was still a long way to go before it could feel that every mother in the country knew how to give her children their best chance of happy, healthy lives, and to space her family so that each child should have love, security and education throughout childhood, Dr. Bush said. She reported the establishment, at Whangarei, Hamilton and Petone, of three new clinics with fully-trained doctors in charge, for instruction of brides and mothers in contraceptive techniques, and for advising couples on physical problems in marital relationships. The previously established clinics at Christchurch, Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin had experienced an increase in new cases dealt with in spite of a considerable shortage of trainee medical staff, Dr. Bush said