THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 1935. A SOCIAL PROBLEM.

Wairarapa Age, 10 August 1935, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 1935. A SOCIAL PROBLEM.

Aspects of the problem of maternal mortality in this country which need all the attention that can be concentrated on them were dealt with by Sir Alexander Young in his address in the Municipal Hall last evening. The Minister showed that so far as other causes of maternal mortality than septic abortion are concerned, good headway is being made in cutting down the death rate. The number of deaths from septic abortion has risen alarmingly, however, from approximately 14 per year up to 1928 to 42 last year. Then came the Minister’s declaration that septic abortion is not an obstetrical problem but a social problem and that in dealing with this problem, the Health Department needs and earnestly desires the co-operation of societies of women particularly concerned with women’s welfare. The appeal thus made should command a ready response. Here is a matter in which women, by .effective combined effort, may do much to save some members of their sex from cruel suffering and premature death, and to remove a discreditable blot from the fair fame of the Dominion. From the fact that the period in which deaths from the cause Under notice have increased so terribly has been one of acute economic depression, it may be inferred plausibly that poverty and .the distress it occasions are amongst th® vital factors involved. There should be no theorising on the question, however. The facts of the position and the remedies needed should be determined by methodical Investigation which no doubt must be undertaken largely by the women’s societies to whom the Minister of Public Health has appealed for co-operation. The ultimate responsibility, of course, is on the whole community, but it is open to women’s societies to play an important and helpful part in determining what measures, whether of education or of social amelioration and improvement, are needed to protect and safeguard members of their sex from a fate that every thinking man and woman must deplore.