OBSTETRICAL SCHOOL

Southland Times, Issue 22052, 27 June 1933, Page 6

OBSTETRICAL SCHOOL

DUNEDIN’S REQUIREMENTS. SOCIETY GRAVELY CONCERNED. . (Per United Press Association.) Wellington, June 26. The New Zealand Obstetrical Society is at present gravely concerned because the New Zealand School at Dunedin falls below the minimum standard required by the General Medical Council of Great Britain, solely because it does not possess an adequate obstetric hospital. A deputation from the society waited upon the Minister of Health last week and stated that in August 1929 £50,000 was definitely promised for a new maternity hospital at the medical school and that that promise had been constantly repeated by the Ministers of Health and Education. During the obstetrical endowment appeal early in 1930, a statement that the Government was giving the hospital was everywhere used as an inducement to the public to subscribe to the sum required for the endowment of teachers’ services. As the promoters of the appeal, the Obstetrical Society, has felt an obligation to the people to see the matter finalized. In the last two years it has realized the Government was passing through times of unparalleled financial stress and, therefore, has been content with the promise of the Director-General of Health that the building would proceed as soon as finances permitted. In view of the fact that the Minister of Finance proposes to release £500,000 for constructional and developmental work, the society has brought the urgency of the matter before the Government, maintaining that the reproach that the Dominion does not possess an adequate obstetric hospital should be removed. The situation is rendered doubly acute by the fact that accommodation at the Batchelor Hospital, Dunedin, is so congested that all normal cases have to be discharged on the tenth day. The society has learnt that negotiations are pending by which St. Helens in Dunedin will be enlarged to provide accommodation pro tern. As these enlargements will not bring the obstetrical unit up to the minimum standards laid down by the British Medical Society, the council feels that any money spent on a 30-year-old wooden building will be money wasted, and urges that at least part of the new building as promised in 1929, be listed for work of first class importance in the Hon. J. G. Coates’s scheme. The Minister of Health was sympathetic to the deputation but pointed out that the request for a grant would have to be referred to the Minister of Finance.