Adequate Obstetric Hospital Wauled

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 7193, 27 June 1933, Page 7

Adequate Obstetric Hospital Wauled

DEPUTATION TO MINISTER Ter Press Association WELLINGTON, Last Night. ' Tho New Zealand Obstetrical Society is at present gravely concerned because the New Zealand Medical School at Dunedin fails below the minimum standard required by the General Medical Council of Great Britain solely because it docs not possess an adequate obstetric hospital. A deputation from the society waited upon the Minister of Health last week and pointed out that in August, 1929, £50,000 was definitely promised for a new maternity hospital at tho Medical School and that that promise had been constantly repeated by Ministers of Health and Education during the obstetrical endowment appeal early in .1930. The statement that the Government was giving the hospital was everywhere used as an inducement to the public to subscribe to the sum required for the endowment of teaching services. As promoters of the appeal the Obstetrical Society has felt au obligation to the people to see that the matter was finalised. In the last two years it has realised that the Government was passing through times of unparallellcd financial stress and therefore had been content with the promise of the Director-General of Health that the building would proceed as soon as finances permitted. In view of the fact that the Minister of Finance proposes to release £500,000 for constructional and developmental work, the society has brought the urgency of the matter before the Government, maintaing that tho reproach that the Dominion docs not possess an adequato obstetric hospital should be removed. The situation is rendered doubly acute by the fact that the accommodation at Batchelor hospital, Dunedin, is so congested that all the normal cases have to be discharged on the tenth day. The society has learnt that negotiations were pending by which St. Helen’s, in Dunedin, would be enlarged to provide accommodation pro tem. As theso enlargements will not bring the obstetrical unit up to the minimum standards laid down by the British Medical Council tho society feels that any money spent on the 30-year-old wooden building will be money wasted, and urges that at least part of tho new building as promised in 1929 be listed as a work of first class importance in Mr. Coates’ scheme.

The Minister of Health was sympathetic to the deputation but pointed out that tho request for a grant would havo to be referred to the Minister of Finance.