SAFE MATERNITY.

Putaruru Press, Volume VI, Issue 225, 23 February 1928, Page 3

SAFE MATERNITY.

NEW ZEALAND’S AIM.

A Medical Paper’s Comment.

“ The annual report of the DirectorGeneral of Health for New Zealand possesses its own significance for readers in Great Britain, and that for the past year will be read with much pleasure and interest,” says the December number of Public Health, London, the official organ of the Society of Medical Health. “ There is none of the dominions where English stock and heritage survive and flourish with greater security, or where more pride and purpose are shown in the endeavour to emulate and surpass standards of national life, assisted by conditions of climate and occupation comparatively but little different from our own. We are glad, then, to find opportunity of considering and comparing the things that matter in our mutual efforts on behalf of public health. “In infant w T elfare New Zealand has long held, and deserved, an unequalled reputation; she carries the lowest infantile mortality as well as the lowest general death-rate in the world. In mortality from tuberculosis her record is almost as good, and the incidence of typhoid fever has been reduced to negligible proportions. All these things make fine reading in the report of a country of which a great part is still in the hands of pioneers, and where much depends on far-sight-ed and alert departmental activity.” After analysing the infantile and maternal mortality death-rates, the article continues:—

“ That the Health Department is well aware of improvements that may be effected in regard to the latter is made clear by plans on foot for new equipment and accommodation, a standardised asceptic routine, extended training for midwives, etc., and the decline in the hospital mortality rate, which would be expected from an improved realisation of ideals of midwifery practice, will no doubt evidence itself now with the minimum of delay. But, as Dr Jellet (consultant obstetrician) says, until by the goodwill of the Plunket Society or otherwise, a chair of obstetrics is achieved for the Dunedin University Medical School, the practice of midwifery cannot be expected to attain the highest level of excellence in New Zealand generally, and it will be a little while before the Dominion, in ensuring the maximum of safety and protection for her motherhood, quite reaches the glorious and conspicuous place above all others that she has already won for herself in respect of her babies.”