MATERNITY HOSPITAL

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 October 1933, Page 2

MATERNITY HOSPITAL

MINISTERIAL ATTITUDE,

[PEB PBESB ASSOCIATION.]

STRATFORD, October 27.

Commenting upon the discussion, when the deputation of Otago members waited on the Ministers of Finance and Health, with reference to the obstetrical hospital, Dr. Doris Gordon said the statement credited the Minister of Health as saying that the request for the hospital was a comparatively recent development, arising since the establishment of the Chair of Obstetrics. This was not correct, nor indicative of Mr Young’s interest in the welfare of women and children. The Chair of Obstetrics, said Dr. Gordon, was established on May 1, 1930, when women handed over a cheque for £25,000. but so far back as September, 1928, Mr Young received the Obstetrical Society executive and discussed in an informal way the possibility of securing a hospital. Although unable to offer any financial promises, the Minister had given helpful advice, and was keenly interested in the possibility of enlisting the help of women to finance either the construction of the hospital, or the endowment of the Professional Chair. The first official request to Parliament for this hospital was made in February, 1929, by a deputation appointed at a gathering of over 100 N.Z. graduates of medicine, to convey to the Minister of Health, the pressing need that this hospital should be made up-to-date, and brought into line with similar institutions overseas. These graduates came from all over the Dominion, and represented every branch of medical art, and the majority of them had no immediate interest in the practice of obstetrics, yet they were unanimous in their request that the one blot on the medical school, the primitive obstetrical teaching facilities, should immediately be remedied. This: deputation was sympathetically received by the Minister of Health on that date (Mr Stallworthy) and in August, 1929 it was announced that the Government had sanctioned a grant for the hospital. “It was only after Cabinet had made this decision,” said Dr. Gordon. “That the Obstetrical Society shaped the endowment appeal which culminated in the endowment of the obstetrical Chair.”