MATERNAL MORTALITY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20520, 22 March 1930, Page 14

MATERNAL MORTALITY.

Sir, —In vour issue of March 17 an Inglewood doctor (who, being a graduate of Edinburgh Medical School, is evidently not well acquainted with conditions in the New Zealand Medical School) wrote to the effect that instead of raising money to establish a full professorship of midwifery in the Dominion Medical School, we aught to concentrate our energies on buildinp more maternity annexes in this Dominion. I quite agree that more hospitals must shortly be scattered through the rural areas of this country, but cannot see how their erection will dispense with the necessity of a highly-trained professor of midwifeiy in the local Medical School. Who is to train the doctors who are to staff such maternity hospitals ? Obstetricians do not bud on hedgerows in New Zealand; they have to bo educated, trained, moulded for such posts of responsibility in six long years of studont days, and during this time they need teachers. My colleague who writes from Inglewood quotes the good record of one maternity hospital in my near neighbourhood as an argument against an obstetrical endowment fund. As the doctor in charge of this Stratford annexe is himself an ardent supporter of the appeal, and his wife is in charge of the local committee for the! obstetrical fund, no lay person need question whether wo should have the teacher or the. hospitals first. ■ Our Inglewood critic said he was afraid -this appeal was being called the "Save the Mothers Fund." Anyone acquainted with the literature of our movement knows that though the reduction of the Dominion's maternal mortality rate is one of the chief objectives, the appeal has a wider sphere than that alone. We hope by tho expenditure of this money, not, only to effect a reduction in the maternal death-rate, but'to reduco the infantile still-birth rate, to lessen the incidence of disability that too often follows upon childbirth, to lessent the number of women who suffer mental derangement as a late effect of their maternal duty, and by assuring the mothers that they will have maxirtium comfort and maximum safety during their time of confinement give peace of mind to expectant fathers as well as expectant mothers, DOEIS C, Gordon, F.R.C.S.E. 1