SAFER & PAINLESS MATERNITY

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 56, 22 March 1937, Page 6

SAFER & PAINLESS MATERNITY

-Preu» ABBOoiation.)

N.Z. Inquiry May Raise Birth-Rate THE BEST "MIGRANTS"

(By Telegraph-

' . XNT3ERCARGILL, Last Night. * The most disquieting and depressing ;feature e£ our natioual statistics is the fall in the birth rate," said the Minister of Health, Hon. P. Praser, in his address at the opening of the new hospital yesterday." That our birth rate; should be kept as high as possible is' •important at present and of immense importance to the future of the country." • There was at .the present time a great ideal of discussion about the necessity jfor a bigger population, and various jauggestions had been rnade about a renewal of immigration. Steps would certftinly have to be taken to secure a, bigger population for the Dominion, butj not un.til New Zealand 's economic lifai 'had been so arranged as to absorb all. .'physically fit workers. Nor could .therej tbe any argument about the fact that the,' ibest "immigrants" were babies born inj iour own land and born of healthy, vigor-j jous and intellectual parents — parents) isuch as we have in our own young men' and women. "Young parents should be encour-j aged to have children, ' ' the Minister'said, and with this as one of its objec-j tives the Govemment was anxious that) the matemai mortality Tate' of the Do-,' minjion should be the lowest on earth; and that motherhood should be made as safe and as free from pain as possible. To further this aim a committeer had now begun an extensiv'e examination of the maternity service of the Dominion with a view to taking steps, wherever necessary, to make it the most efficient service that could be obtained so .thatj the best inf ormed, most scientific and most sMlled care and attention could be at the disposal of mothers of the; Dominion^