THE GOVERNMENT'S BUILDING PROPOSALS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21977, 12 June 1933, Page 8

THE GOVERNMENT'S BUILDING PROPOSALS

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —Prior to the slump Cabinet agreed to build an up-to-date maternity hospital in Dunedin. A sum of £50,000 was allocated for this purpose, and a vote of £IO,OOO was placed on the Estimates. The Hospital Board and the University Council were in accord as to. the site which was, however, objected to by the medical faculty and the staff of the Medical School. But for this objection the hospital would have been erected. Then came the slump, and the Government welcomed the difference of opinion and vetoed the whole expenditure. It is common knowledge that St. Helen’s Hospital nor Batchelor Hospital is at all suitable for the efficient training of our medical students. The professor of midwifery, who was appointed as a result or the Obstetrical Society’s effort, is teaching under tremendous disadvantages. As a result of the depression much more use is being made of the maternity hospitals than formerly. The patients are not, in the circumstances, receiving such benefit as should be provided by an un-to-date institution under the supervision of our faculty-appointed full-time professor.

I submit. Sir, that in the interests of our women, and also from the point of view of the teaching of our students, and in view of Mr Coates’s proposals, the whole question should be reopened, .and a now hospital should be built. The idea of tinkering with either St. Helen’s or Batchelor Hospital is a poor economy. During recent expressions of opinion by far-seeing public men a statement was made that there were more pressing and more necessary things than the building of a new post office. Both buildings might be gone on with, and so work would be provided for a very large number of men. T would suggest that the Hospital Board, the University Council, the City Council, the various women’s organisations, and the Expansion League should get together and approach Mr Coates with the idea of getting these works started as soon as possible.—l am, etc., June 0. James Fitzgerald.