MEDICAL SCHOOL

Hokitika Guardian, 28 June 1933, Page 8

MEDICAL SCHOOL

A NEED URGED.

AN OBSTETRIC HOSPITAL

WELLINGTON, June 26

The New Zealand Obstetrical Society is at present gravely concerned because the Otago Medical School at Dunedin falls below the minimum standard required by the General Medical Council of Great Britain, solely because it does not possee's an adequate obstetric hospital. A deputation from the society waited upon the Minister for Health, the Hon. J. A. Young, last week, and stated that in August, 1929, £50,000 had been definitely promised for a new maternity hospital at the Medical School, ■and that that promise had been constantly repeated by the Ministers for Health and Education. During the obstetrical endowment appeal early in .930, the statement that the Government was giving the hospital £50,000 was everywhere used as an inducement to the public to subscribe to the* sum required for the endowment of teaching service;. As promoters of the appeal, the Obstetrical' Society has felt an obligation to the people to see the matter completed. CONTENT WITH PROMISE.

In the last two years, it is stated the society lias realised that the Government is passing through times of unparalleled financial stress, and lias therefore 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 for Finance proposes to release £500,000 for constructional and development work, the society has brought the urgency of the, matter before the 'Government, maintaining tint the reproach that the Dominion clods not an. adequate obstetric hospital should he removed. The situation is rendered doubly .acute, it is stated, by. the fact that th« accommodation at the Batchelor Maternity Hospital at Dunedin is so congested that all normal cases have to be. discharged on the tenth dav, NEW BUILDING WANTED. The society lias learned that negotiations are pending by which St. Helens Hospital in Dunedin will he enlarged to provide more accommodation in the meantime. As these enlargements vvill not bring the obstetrical unit up to the minimum standards laid down by the British Medical Council, Hie society feels that any money spent on a 30-year-old wooden building "’ill be money wrested, and urges that at least a part of the new' building as promised in 1029 be listed as work pf first-class importance in Mr Coates’, scheme. The Minister for Health was .sympathetic tq the deputation, but he mentioned that, the request for a grant would have to be referred to the Minister fpv Finance.