MOTHER AND CHILD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18710, 16 May 1924, Page 12

MOTHER AND CHILD.

PRE-NATAL CARE ESSENTIAL.

TRAGIC- RESULTS OF NEGLECT.

A highly-important aspect of the problem of maternal mortality was emphasised by Dr. Truby King, when opening a sale of work.in aid of the Plunket Society at Eastbourne, Wellington. "We wish the whole community could be brought to realise more fully the duty which every woman owes to herself and owes to her child in the nine eventful months of life preceding child-birth," he said. _ The society always offers the best advice and service its nurses can give in this connection, but very few women realise the benefits which the Plunket nurse 3 are qualified and anxious to confer, if only their counsel and aid were more often sought during pregnancy. In spite of all our efforts, few women yet understand the boon and safety conferred o'n mother and child by proper ante-natal care and preparedness- for motherhood. One of the factors of our unduly high maternal mortality is the failure of prospective mothers to establish the simple standard of health and fitness needed for>the protection and wellbeing of themselves and their offspring." Dr. King also referred to another matter in which progress . is disappointingly slow — allowing .children' sweefcs and "pieces" between meals. "The leading dental and medical authorities all deplore the spoiling of digestion and decay of the teeth brought about by these utterly .wrong habits which do so much to under/mine the health and fitness of the rising generation," he said. "I noticed this afternoon a number of children entering a so-called picture palace, to worse than waste the sunny hours, when they ought to be playing in the open- and truly enioving themselves, as I saw a number of girls doing when passing through a park where a game of hockey was in progress. There is ample space of land and seashore here. Why were these other children tempted and allowed. to idle away a glorious afternoon, sitting in stuffy semi-, darkness, when they ought to have"been basking in the sunshine, drinking in the open air, and actively building bono and muscle '.