MAORI CHILD'S DEATH

New Zealand Herald, Volume 78, Issue 24106, 27 October 1941, Page 9

MAORI CHILD'S DEATH

DOCTOR NOT CONSULTED CORONER'S THIRD CASE (0.C.) WAIROA, Sunday "This is the third time within a very short period in which there has been delay by Maoris in taking a sick child to a doctor," declared .Mr. V. E. Winter, coroner, at an inquest in Wairoa into the death of a three-months-old Maori child, Peter Ranapia, of Te Reinga. Returning a verdict in accordance with the medical evidence, Mr. Winter gave an instruction that the police should make further inquiries. Dr. E. B. Jardine said he was called from a medical board sitting and saw a child in a car. It was dead. From the evidence of the district nurse and the parents he concluded that the child had an abscess on its face. Probably it originated from internal ear trouble and it would be quite sufficient to cause death if left untreated. The district nurse, Miss Izona Harden, said that she had instructed the parents to have the child taken to a doctor. Sho also said that she would wait half an hour for them so that they could take the child, but they made no attempt to go with her. They said that thov would take it in by service car or private car the next day. After giving lier instructions, she thought that they would be carried out. The mother, Mrs. Ellen Ranapia, admitted that the nurse called several times to see the child and that she had been told to take it to a doctor. The reason why she did not go was because she had no money. The father, Sonny Isaac Ranapia, said he had had to go away shearing. His wife did not take the child into Wairoa to see a doctor because she had no clothes. He thought the child was improving, so did not take it in. He had told his wife, he said, that if she got a chance she was to take the baby to a doctor. The coroner remarked that such cases were becoming far too common. If parents had no money, then arrangements would soon be made for sick children to be hrought in to Wairoa.