THE MATERNITY HOSPITAL.

Evening Star, Issue 21715, 9 May 1934, Page 8

THE MATERNITY HOSPITAL.

At last, after inordinate delays, finality should be promised for the project of a now maternity hospital for Dunedin. A good many people must have wondered, while the Government and the Hospital Board and the University Council, as controlling body for the Medical School, argued, whether they would ever see its walls arise. it is more than four years since the women’s societies of New Zealand made their appeal for funds to endow a chair of obstetrics which drew its chief strength from the Government’s offer to find £50,000 for the erection of an up-to-date hospital. The offer itself was first- made in August, 1929. The women’s societies and the public dql

their part, and then the Government withdrew from its undertaking on the ground of economic difficulties, which hud since grown greater. Since then them has been continuous argument as to how the cost of a much cheaper building might bo divided between the Government and the Hospital Hoard, and the Government lias been as hard to deal with ns if huge sums made the difference between live parties, though, for a long time past, the difference has been reduced to almost insignificant proportions. The problem had been cased by outside interventions. The Unemployment Board undertook to provide £3,000 as a building subsidy and the Dunedin Savings Bank had voted £I,OOO towards the cost of a site, but those easings were not enough. The cost of construction and equipment was estimated at £30,000. Nearly throe months ago the Government offered to find £IO,OOO, the balance to be raised by the usual method of levy and subsidy —that is, one half by the board and one half by the Health Department. With the assistance from other quarters, this would have cost the Government £lB,000. The Hospital Board offered to provide the building if the Government would give it £20,000 and St. Helens Hospital as it is at present. As no reply has been made yet to tills proposal the inference was that it did not satisfy the Government, though the reduction from its original promise of £50,000 was most certainly pronounced. Now the Dunedin Savings Bank has come forward and shown once more its philanthropic value to this city by offering to provide from its last year’s profits the sum of £6,000 towards the cost of construction, conditional on the Government’s acceptance of the board’s proposal. The last obstacle to a commencement with the work should surely be removed by this offer. The division of expenses which is indicated would allow the new building to be erected without any further burden on the hospital rate, already to be increased by one penny in the pound due to other causes. The necessity for a new hospital, to provide for students’ training, which is a State matter, as well as local needs, is beyond all question, and in the conditions which have now been made it is unthinkable that the Government should do other than accept the Hospital Board’s offer.