MATERNITY DEATHS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 2 August 1924, Page 5

MATERNITY DEATHS.

DEPARTMENT CRITICISED. DEBATE IN HOUSE. ’•BV TELEGRAPH PKICBS ASSOCIATION > WELLINGTON, Aug. 1. Criticism of the work and administra. tion of the Health Department, with special reference to the maternity mortality question, formed the subject of a speech in the House to-night by Mr. F. N. Bartram (Labour member for Grey Lynn). Mr Bartram said the expenditure of the department actually showed a reduction. He complaineff at the delay in publishing the findings of the Kelvin hospital commission, one of the most important in the recent history of the Dominion. He contended the commission had been very generous in its findings so far as the hospital and staff were concerned, and he condemned severely the Health Department’s lethargy in connection with the matter. Apparently the department could not be stimulated to action until a number of lives were lost.

The Labour Party for years had stressed the undue mortality among mothers in New Zealand of recent years. A damning feature was the Minister’s admission that the Health Department had been starved as part of the Government’s economy policy, and the moral to be noted was that private maternity hospitals must go and the medical and hospital services must he socialised. Mr. Bartram quoted figures covering maternity mortality in England. According to Dr.. Charles Porter one mother died for every 250 children born, and he had considered this a very had state of affairs. In New Zealand the figures of the last quarter of a century had grown one in 282 to one in 185. In Denmark, under a State controlled system, the proportion was one in 499