BETTER CONDITIONS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 54, Issue 3898, 7 May 1937, Page 3

BETTER CONDITIONS

RID MOTHERHOOD OF ITS DANGERS. LOSS OF LIVES CALLS FOR NATIONAL ACTION. Sixty or seventy years ago Florence Nightingale, the mother of modern nursing practice, said that "a death in child birth is almost a subject for an inquest.” That statement was made during a period when obstetrics and midwifery were, more or less, a practice covered by the cloak of ignorance and hyprocrisy; and yet to day we find insistent demands being made by those who have a specialised knowledge of the subject, “that an expert and impartial inquiry should be made into every death occurring in child birth.” This is surely significant and can be taken as an indictment of the policy of governments generally. As a member of the House of Representatives (writes Mr E. J. Harrison, M.H.R., in the Sydney SunGuardian) I am deeply concerned with the state of affairs as revealed by tile Federal Statistician, concerning two of the greatest evils that are associated with our communal life — 1. The high maternal mortality. 2. The infantile mortality rate during the first week of life. SUPPLEMENT BONUS. It is not my desire to‘become an alarmist or to unduly criticise the Departments of Health or our obstetricians, but one is entitled to ask, following the newspaper statements made by our several Ministers of Health, that show a complete understanding of the picture—“ Well, what are you going to do about it?” and to demand, in the name of public safety, that they, in co-operation with our obstetricians, should evolve a policy of making motherhood safe for mothers. Child birth causes the death of more than 500 mothers yearly in Australia, while 40 in every 1000 children die before they reach the age of one year, and 20 in every 1000 do not survive one week. Are we not entitled to ask why these rates are so high?

It is the failure to answer such a question and the fear of motherhood that have, in a pleasure, driven women to the use of contraceptives. I say in a measure, because I believe that, notwithstanding the gam He they are called upon to play with their lives at child birth, women would be brave enough to venture the valley of the shadow if it were not for the soul-searing and mental hazard of the economic question. Malnutrition is bad enough to be decried in any civilised community, but it is criminal to condone it where it affects the mothers of the race. The £750,000 spent on baby bonuses could well be supplemented by some scheme of nutrition to expectant moth ers, even if it consisted only of a free issue of milk to expectant mothers for some months prior to child birth and some nine months after. STANGANT POPULATION. The danger in our falling birth rate is real enough; the stagnation that has been predicted in England about the year 1940 will be* ours, according to statistics, in 1968. What are we going to do about it? The seepage of infant mortality, due to cause associated with child birth, amounts in the case of still births in New soul:. ‘A ales to 1417 for the first and only year of registration, year 1935-36, and swells the total of 2500 odd deaths in the first week of life. The fact that this wastage of human life is not necessary is supported by the fact that maternity hospitals in the heart of London’s slumdom show a record of a loss of one mother in 2000. Even in Australia we have maternity hospitals which can show a record of two in 1000. It is time to demand that words shall cease-ami action begin.