SAFEGUARD MOTHERS

NZ Truth, Issue 1263, 13 February 1930, Page 20

SAFEGUARD MOTHERS

Obstetrical Society's ! | Appeal

MONEY NEEDED

THROUGHOUT the Empire large sums b'f money have recently been spent on the improvement of the midwifery departments of the various ''medical schools. This expenditure is a national effort to reduce the maternal death-rate, the still birth rate, and to lessen the incidence of- disabilities' supervening upon child birth. Every up-to-date medical school m the Empire now has its own large midwifery hospital, m which the students live m residence during: the time of their practical obstetrical instruction/ The New Zealand school to date has no such hospital. All the best medical schools have. • well-paid professors of midwifery. Sydney and Melbourne schools pay their obstetrical professors £2000 per annum. For the last 20 years New Zealand has been paying its lecturer £200 per annum and its tutor m practical midwifery £75 per annum. Thanks to private endowments, the iflepartments of surgery and medicine In the New Zealand- Medical School have been brought thoroughly up to (Bate. Improvements have also recently been effected m the departments of anatomy, bacteriology and pathology, but for lack of funds there has been no capital improvement m the midwifery department for. the last JO years. In 1928, after the visit of the LonBon specialist, Mr. Victor Bonney, to he Dominion,., the Government granted he sum of £500 per annum to enable ! slight improvement to be effected m ie salaries of the teachers of midwifery and gynaecology. In August, 1929, the Government anounced that it would grant the sum £ £ 60,000 for the erection of an up-j-date midwifery hospital m conneclon with the Dominion Medical School, 'his grant will not provide -anything >r teaching salaries, and such a hosital will be uselesjs without a good cad. The Obstetrical Society of New Zeaaid now asks for an endowment of 525,000 to put the midwifery departlent of the Dominion Medical School pon a sound and up-to-date footing. This call will be a non-recurring he, and we appeal to the public of few Zealand, who ha.ye so generously upported all efforts for the welfare of tifahts, to show an equal generosity o a department whose work it is to afeguard the life of motherland ,ina.nt durihg-'pregrnancy and childbirth. J