WASTE OF HUMAN LIFE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 2804, 30 October 1924, Page 3

WASTE OF HUMAN LIFE.

MATERNAL MORTALITY. AUSTRA LI AX CONDITIONS. BETTER-TRAINED DOCTORS. Nearly 300 women in New South Wales die every, year in child-birth, and the State does practically nothing to put a stop to this waste oi‘ life, which causes a direct shortage of some 500 children annually. In the last generation New South Wales has lost from this cause between 9,000 and 10,000 young mothers, and incurred a deficit of over 15,000 babies. These Tacts were stressed by Dr A. Watson Munro, in a statement to the Sydney Telegraph. He declares that this wretched xvaste of life is largely preventable by wise measures uoav at our command. Reform must begin at headquarters; that is, with the training of young medical men at the university. “The University of Sydney supplies to its medical students only a defective training in the science and art of midwifery; although that is the most important of all the practical subjects in the young doctor’s education,” said Dr. Munro. “The very wants of hoofed cattle have been conserved by a veterinary department, with a full professorial staff (a professor five assistants) with provision for hundreds of lectures on all diseases, not forgetting a special obsteirical course, while human midAvifery is relegated to a mean lectureship at a salary 100 contemptible for public discussion. “Is there no remedy? What result are Ave entitled to, if the teachings of modern science were thoroughly and honestly applied.? The answer is that it is possible to reduce ibis mortality to one-ienlh of the present figure, namely, one in 2.000 cases, instead of one in 200. Our total birthrate in Ibis State in [023 was 5-1,000; of this the death-, rate accordingly should be 2i, instead of 300. “Last July, at the annual meeting of the British Medical Association in Bradford, England, an army surgeon, Dr. E. Ij. Moss, announced a series 04 over two-thousand maternit a- cases with only one death. Such saA's he, are the conditions which now prevail ‘in a certain small section of our population, namely, the wives of soldiers in the British Army.’ Ifis triumph Avas attained at the Louise Margaret Hospital, Aldershot; and he contends that, this low mortality can be maintained.” Dr. Munro warmly supported the. programme suggested by the assembled societies of women, at various meetings since this mat ter Avas made a live subject of discussion last year. It demands: (1) Tae establishment of a professorship and I allyequipped department of midwifery at Sydney University; (2) the erection of special maternity hospitals in large cejitres and of annexes in smaller hospitals; (3) the abolition, of “premiums” in the shape of fees noAV paid by midwifery trainees and the consequent increase of qualified maternity nurses. lie added tlioJ legislators and university senators havx>.-failed to sense the far-reaching importance to the State of this department of public health. “Now it falls to all Australian women of good intent, invincible as they are Avhen united and resolved Jo take the broom in both hands and SAveep this scandal away.”