MATERNAL MORTALITY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3861, 13 March 1928, Page 10

MATERNAL MORTALITY.

“ GIVE THE MOTHER A CHANCE.” MR BONNEY’S ADVICE. “ Maternity is a natural thing, and because it is so, and because we have become accustomed to it through so many generations, w e expect everything to go right. As a matter of fact. Nature has provided very wonderfully for it, and in most cases things do go right. But Nature is more concerned with the next generation than with this, and so most of her efforts are spent on the child, and sometimes she lets the mother down.” These were some of the observations made by Mr Victor Bonney, the eminent English surgeon, to the Otago Women’s Club on Thursday afternoon. He went on to say that it was the doctor’s duty to see that the mother got a square deal. At any time in the course of confinement he might be called on to interfere in the interests of mother or child, but the public did not realise that that interference was jn the nature of a surgical operation. “ Jf an appendix is to be taken out,” he said, “ the patient goes to a hospital, and the doctor is given every chance to do his best, but when he has to perform what is often a very much more difficult surgical operation, he is given no chance at all. That is what the public should realise. If we want to lower our maternity mortality we must recognise the doctor’s difficulties, and give him a chance. “Tn England, in connection with all our large hospitals we are building maternity hospitals. These perform three functions. First they give the expectant mother adequate pre-natal care, and adequate care at the time of confinement, and also adequate after care. At the same time they train the coming doctors in all the best that science can afford, and in addition they are centres for research in the problems of maternity. “ Medicine is divided into three main

parts—medicine, surgery, and obstetrics. In your Medical School you have a professor of surgery and a professor of medicine, but no professor of Obstetrics. You have no large maternity hospital attached to your general hospital. In other words, obstetrics is not given a chance it should be. You must realise that as it is the • oldest branch, so is the most important, because with it is bound up the welfare of the race. Everyone must take an interest in this, because it matters so much to every member of the community.”