£25,000 WANTED

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 889, 5 February 1930, Page 7

£25,000 WANTED

FOUNDING CHAIR OF OBSTETRICS DOMINION-WIDE APPEAL A Dominion-wide appeal is to be made for the sum of £25.000 for the purpose of founding a Chair of Obstetrics in Dunedin. Lady Robertson, in making the appeal, states that the Obstetrical Society of New Zealand is calling the attention of the public to the urgency of reorganising the midwifery department of the New Zealand School of Medicine. The appeal is to be launched in March. The Auckland and Wellington districts expect to raise £7.500, and the share for Christchurch and Dunedin has been worked out at £5,000. each on a population basis. The Government will subsidise all moneys collected pound for pound, and if the appeal meets with the response and sympathy it deserves, it will be possible to found a Chair of Obstetrics in Dunedin and appoint a professor on the subject. The Government has already granted a sum of £50.000 to build a maternity hospital in Dunedin as part of the scheme. The Obstetrical Society, in making the appeal, considers that if the maternity hospital is built and equipped, and there are no funds available for the endowment of the Chair of Obstetrics, much of the hospital’s usefulness will be lost to the mothers of New Zealand. Committees have been formed in the four centres, and from these it is hoped to get in touch with every womans’ organisation in the Dominion, asking for their whole-hearted support. The method’ of working the different districts is to be left entirely to the wishes of the local committees. The Plunket Society and the Government have combined and instituted a school for mid wives in Dunedin. The work of this society in arranging pre-natal lectures and teaching prospective mothers how to take care of themselves during pregnancy has done a great deal toward lowering the maternal and infant mortality in New Zealand. Tin Plunket Society, together with other women's societies, feels that much more can yet be done for the mothers. The great need of the moment is the endowment of the Chair of Obstetrics and every woman is asked to help to the best of her ability in this great effort to make maternity safer. Lady Alice Fergusson has extended her patronage to the appeal.