THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, MAY 9, 1934.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22257, 9 May 1934, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, MAY 9, 1934.

THE OBSTETRICS HOSPITAL Onb of (he grants which the trustees of the Dunedin Savings Bank have decided to make out of the profits of the institution for the past year should have the very desirable effect of bringing the erection of the Obstetrics Hospital in Dunedin definitely, within the range of achievement. The history of the negotiations for the provision of the finance necessary to implement the undertaking that was given to the women of New Zealand when they public-spiritedly raised a large sum of money for the endowment of a Chair of Obstetrics in the Otago Medical School has been somewhat chequered. The Government was to have provided £50,000 to provide for the erection and equipment of a maternity hospital and also to make a special grant to the Hospital Board of £2OOO per annum for five years. There was no qualification about the offer. The large-hearted women, who realised the importance of the establishment of a modern hospital for the reception of maternity cases and the training of medical students and maternity nurses, were inspired by it with the zeal and energy that enabled them to carry to a highly successful issue their own patriotic effort. If the Government had fulfilled its offer, the Obstetrics Hospital would long ago have been erected. It has pleaded the economic situation as a reason why it was unable to make the grant which it offered. The negotiations between it and the Hospital Board, upon which the responsibility for providing public maternity services has been statutorily placed since the erection of the Obstetrics Hospital in connection with the Medical School was first mooted, have been. productive of various modifications of the original offer. The latest proposal that was made by the Minister of Health, on behalf of the Government, was one of a grant of £IO,OOO, to be supplemented by a subsidy on an amount to be raised by the Hospital Board by way of levy. As the estimated cost of the hospital and equipment was £30,000, and as the Unemployment Board had agreed to provide a building subsidy of £3OOO and the Dunedin Savings Bank had voted £IOOO towards" the cost of a site, this would leave £16,000 to be provided by levy and subsidy. On this basis the total grant of the Government would be £IB,OOO. The Hospital Board submitted a counter-offer to this proposal —that the Government should contribute £20,000 and hand over St. Helens Hospital to the Board for disposal. It was contemplated that the balance of the cost, after allowance for the Unemployment Board's subsidy, would be raised by levy. The difference in the cost to the Government of the adoption of its latest offer and the acceptance by it of the Hospital Board's proposal would be inconsiderable. It is at this juncture that the trustees of the Dunedin Savings Bank have made a very generous grant. For the unclaimed vote of £IOOO which they made last year they have substituted a , grant of ■_■ £ 6000, provisional on the acceptance by the Government of the Hospital Board's proposal. This handsome gesture on the part of the trustees of the Savings Bank affords to the Government an opportunity of closing the negotiations between it and the Hospital Board on terms that should be satisfactory to itself and that would permit of a work of national value being put in hand with the least possible delay. While the trustees of the bank have, by the grants they have made, recognised the claims which a number of deserving organisations have upon their funds, they are to be congratulated upon the large-mindedness that has prompted them to offer a most substantial contribution towards the cost of an institution designed for the benefit of the maternity service of the whole of the Dcminion and to bring within measurable reach an undertaking that will absorb a large amount of labour for several "months.