MATERNITY HOMES.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume L, Issue 16370, 1 March 1924, Page 7

MATERNITY HOMES.

DEATHS OF MOTHERS

THE AUCKLAND INQUIRY

1 1V r Press Association.)

AUCKLAND. lasi night

Al' the liospi t ;il inquiry Mr. Johnstone, counsel l'or pelitinners, in opening liis ease, said not i lieu t ion was necessary Mini essential, and in some, cases of iilmorinal temperature ill least septicaemia must have been suspected.! Maybe the weakness of private liospi-1 Inis was there was not sufficient. co-, ordinntion SvLthAue'dica'l nnjn;, whti- \vOre','. not .aware of what went ytn.r jt unable to produce evidence that the cases were septic, and all he could do was to put in charts. What was really hoped for from the commission j was that some means would be devised ‘ whereby similar happenings would not occur in future. i

Counsel went into details of the eases under review, with the object of showing that there was ground for reasonable suspicion regarding the nature of the complaint. Dr. (Sidney Allen, giving evidence regarding the death of Mrs. Barker, his patient at Kelvin, said lie did not for one minute think death was due to septicaemia, because lie had never known a case where the patient’s pulse was normal where death had occurred whilst the patient was unconscious, or where death had occurred in a condition of spasm.

Counsel: Is it not usual for a doctor to sue a patient before confinement? Witness: Weil, no; it is not. A doctor doesn’t as a rule attend before he can do something. Continuing, witness said it never entered his head to make a bacteriological examination to ascertain what was the trouble.

To Mr. Findlay, who appeared for Nurse Gibbons, matron of Kelvin, witness said the charts at Kelvin were well kept, and he knew of no other institution where a note was made on the chart of the treatment given a pal ient. The Chairman: Did you know that there had been eases of septicaemia in the hospital when you attended Mrs. Barker:—l had no idea, not even a whisper of it. Dr. J. B. AlacDiarmid, in reply to the chairman, said it was not the custom to inquire into the recent history of a private hospital before sending a patient. His assumption was that if there was anything infectious in the hospital the matron would inform him. A case should be treated as septic on the slightest information. With regard to noliiicatioii. the system was regarded as a sort of spying by the department on l!ii‘ profession, and there was a lack of co-operation between the department and the doctors. The inquiry was adjourned.

The commission is required to inquire pnrticulnrlv into the illness of Mrs. Heather Hill Barker, Mrs. Hazel Montgomery Morison, and Mrs. Emma Caroline Ada Delamore, who died in Kelvin Maternity Hospital last veer; of Mrs. Doris Elsie ,’ones, who died iii Auckland Hospital; of Mrs. Evelyn Maude Dncre, who died in Mater M isericonliae Hospital; and of Airs. Muir, who developed a disease diagnosed as septicaemia while in Kelvin Hospital, but subsequently recovered.