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Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 260, 31 July 1944, Page 4

An important point was made by Dr. R. Welton Hogg during the Wellington Hospital Board discussion of accommodation for maternity cases when he drew attention to the increase in house-building in the Hutt aie.t and the need to take this into consideration in estimating the future demand for accommodation. There can be no doubt that, as far as is possible, maternity facilities should be provided handy to the people who will require them. The provision of extra accommodation in the Hutt Valley may represent a temporary inconvenience to city patients who cannot be admitted into city institutions, but this situation will exist only until the new St. Helens Hospital is completed. After that, under the arrangement favoured by the board, the extra accommodation in the Valley will be available for the future needs of that area. Incidentally, Dr. Hogg’s argument T>rovided— possibly by unconscious implication—another strong indictment of the State policy of flat-building for synthetic “family” life in a young country urgently in need of population. His remark that “birth control was resorted to more in flats than in houses” and, in relation to the Hutt Valley, that “the difference when people moved to such houses instead of living in flats had also to be considered,” are very much to the point in demonstrating the national foolishness of expecting a generation of flat-dwellers to produce larger, healthy families.