MATERNAL MORTALITY

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 78, 26 December 1925, Page 5

MATERNAL MORTALITY

DR. SIDNBY ALLEN’S MISSION. (To the Editor.) Sirl shall ba glad if you will give uis space for some comments on a letter which appeared in your issue of the 23rd instant, bearing- on Dr. Sidney Allens alleged refusal to enter into si public discussion of the maternal mortality question, when approached by an Auckland reporter on his arrival from Home a few days ago. Allow me to point out some serious mistakes and false assumptions in your correspondent's singularly ill-timed, illnatured, curiously suspicious, and altogether unjustifiable letter: —"Paterfamilias’’ says:— It would be interesting to know why Dr. Allen cannot impart the information be has been able to gather in Europe, for, surely the subject is one of great interest, to others than the medical profession. , Tf Dr.’ Allen was requested by our Health Department to investigate ’ affairs in Europe, it is to be presumed that his visit there was fa- .. cilitated in a certain measure bv. ■ the expenditure of the New Zealand taxpayers’ money. Supposing that, in the public interest; the Health Department, instead of sending a special emissary to the other side of the world, had really employed. a , doctor who happened to be at Homo, to look into and report on life-saving work now being done more effectively in some part of the New or Old World than in New Zealand, the public would have no grievance if the doctor thought fit not to explain everything to the first reporter who interviewed him on his landing—before he had even had the opportunity of conferring with his employers. Yours correspondent jumps to the conclusion that the money must have been provided cut of the publio purse. There is not a particle of foundation for this idea. I cabled Dr. Allen some months ago to do me the favour of conducting, at my own personal expense, a searching investigation at Homo, mid on th» Continent, into the means by which Denmark and Holland have for years kept down their maternal mortality, and their deaths of infants in the first few weeks of life, to only one-half or one-third of the rates which have prevailed in New Zealand. Yet we in this Dominion have reduced our deaths of infants AFTER the first month to less than half the average rates of Dentuark and Holland, and are regarded by those countries as models in this respect. The Government has generously granted the Karitane Hospital, Dunedin, the sum of £14,500 towards the erection and equipment of a special institution, now approaching completion, for the express purpose of affording every certified midwife or maternity nurse special postgraduate facilities for acquiring, by means of well-organised, short, intensive courses of instruction and training, practical knowledge which will help materially in the campaign for lowering our infantile mortality rate in the first month, and contribute at tho safne time to safe motherhood and the rear, ing of a strong, healthy race. As joint general presidents of the Plunket Society, my wife and I have> been anxious to leave no stone unturned to ensure that the society’s latest effort, made in conjunction with tho Health Department, to improve the health and lower the mortality of mother and child shall start as near as possible, to the point which has been reached in Denmark and Holland. Feeling that the best practical means of achieving this would be by inducing Dr. Sidney Allen and others'to find out everything they could ascertain on the spot, .we made our arrangements accordingly—our whole aim and object being to enable ilie Plunket Society to commence its new work on thoroughly sound and tried lines. Dr. Alien’s apparent assumption that lie was being financed by the Health Department, and not by myself, was quite natural, especially as he knew that I am working officially and an president of the Plunket Society » hearty co-operation with the Departmerit'.—l am, etc.,

F. TRUBY KING, Director of Child Welfare. Mount Melrose, Wellington, Deo. ®.