SAVING BABY LIFE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20024, 14 August 1928, Page 11

SAVING BABY LIFE.

SIR TRUBY KING RETURNS.

SPREAD OF PLUNKET METHODS.

WORK FOR THE NEXT DECADE.

Sir Truby King, director of child welfare, returned by the Niagara yesterday after an absence of six months, during which he carried out personal observations of child welfare methods employed in England and on the Continent. He was accompanied on the trip by his daughter. "Since 1 left England nine years ago great progress lias been made on the lines already adopted in New Zealand with regard to child welfare," said Sir Truby on his arrival. "Especially is this so in London." It was in London, in 1917, that Sir Truby founded the Mothercraft Training Centre at Earls Court, thereby transplanting the Plunket system from New Zealand to the Old Country. The centre has since been transferred to Cromwell House, Highgate, one of the highest and most beautiful sites in the London suburbs. It was once the residence of Oliver Cromwell's son-in-law, possessing one of the most picturesque interiors in London, and is constituted an inalienable national memorial. Since the return to England of the Duchess of York on the conclusion of her Dominion tour an effort has been made under her patronage to raise voluntarily £25,000 to extend the hospital buildings and develop a very important centre for the training of infant nurses on the lines of the Karitane nurses. This sum has now been almost realised, and a contract of £21,000 has already been let, so the progress of Plunket work through England is more than assured. The balance of the sum required, namely, £4OOO, will be needed for equipping the new buddings.

Great Progress Made. "Great progress has been made in the United Kingdom in the last ten years in practical work in the interests of mother and child," said Sir Truby, "but it is recognised that still more remains to be done in thei next decade, especially in the direction of reducing maternal mortality and deaths of infants in the first few weeks of life. At the annual national baby week conference, held in London immediately before I left, principal stress was placed on this problem and on the paramount importance both of antenatal care and improvements in the provisions for safeguarding mother and child at and about the time of childbirth, mainly through improvements in the proficiency and professional status of obstetricians as specialists and through similar improvements in the knowledge, practical proficiency and increased supply of mid wives." Position in New Zealand.

Maternal mortality and the death rate among new-born infants in New Zealand was still nearly double the rates in those localities where the very best means wexe available for the solution of the problem, said Sir Truby, and even there tho rates were higher than they should be. Leading English authorities were greatly impressed by the high qualifications required of obstetricians in the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden, and the remarkable efficiency and organisation of midwives and midwifery services. It. was through these factors that the pronounced reduction in maternal and neonatal mortality in those countries had been brought about. Voluntary Services.

Among those keenly alive to the position in England was the chief medical adviser to the Ministry of Health, Sir George Newman, who regarded every death in childbirth as cause for an exacting inquiry. In fact, he was persuading the Government to bring down legislation to this effect. State responsibility, nevertheless, was not what England intended to be solely dependent, upon, except as subsidising voluntary effort. Appeals for aid to establish voluntary services wero features of child welfare at Home.

Sir Truby King had intended spending at least a month in America, but at the end of nearly seven weeks' sojourn on the Continent was obliged to return quickly by way of Vancouver in order to arrive in New Zealand, in time for the biennial general conference of the Plunket Society, which takes place in Wellington in a fortnight.