A COMMUNITY HOSPITAL

Hokitika Guardian, 21 November 1927, Page 1

A COMMUNITY HOSPITAL

QUESTION of MATERNITY AV AIIDS. SYDNEY, Nov. 3. The sense of civic pride which animates, in a very practical form, the residents of some of the better-class suburbs of Sydney, and which is reflected in the beautification of streets by the householders themselves, has now found expression in a new and very humane and useful form. Sidney's public hospitals are crowded. Most of them arc in a bil of a plight, financially. AVitli debts and overdrafts which are oppressing them like an incubus, they find it impossible to make extensions to meet the cieigrowing needs ot a vast metropolis. The residents of the North Shore have now faced courageously the hospital problem as it affects them, with the lead of the very active coimnunjtv service club in one of the suburbs across the water. They have established. in a, magnificent remodelled private residence, a big community hospital, which, while being self-supporting and not conducted for profit, will he independent ol charitable aid. 1 lie hospital will offer, at reasonable rates, the advantages of a private hospital to residents of flic North Shore desirous of retaining the attention and treatment of their own medical advisors. The building itself is the gift of the beneficiaries of a local doctor.

Another aspect of the pressing hospital problem in New South AVales is the question whether accommodation for women, in the travail of motherhood. should take the form of maternity wards attached to hospitals or of special maternity hospitals or homes. The womenfolk, especially those in the country, have been openly advised by one of Sydney’s loading medical men, who can speak bis mind since lie lias retired from active work, to rejeet as an insult to their sex any proposal to establish maternity wards attached to hospitals. This is on a very logical ground that child-bearing is neither a disease nor a casualty, but a natural function of healthy womanhood, and should not, either for private or health reasons lie associated in any form with hospitals, whose functions are the treatment of diseases and acci. dents and general infections. The women are plainly told to reject any such proposal as a barbarism.