OBSTETRICAL APPEAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 916, 8 March 1930, Page 6

OBSTETRICAL APPEAL

NO OPPOSITION FROM B.M.A. DR. GORDON INTERVIEWED Press Association PALMERSTON N.. Today. A statement having been circulated that members of the New Zealand branch of the British Medical Association were opposed to the Dominionwide appeal now being made to endow a Chair of Midwifery at the Otago Medical School the matter was referred to Dr. Doris Gordon, secretary and organiser of the fund. In the course of an interview Dr. Gordon said there was no truth in the statement in circulation that doctors did not approve of the obstetrical endowment appeal. In February, 1929, during the annual conference of the British Medical Association the whole assembly of New Zealand graduates of medicine passed a unanimous resolution urging on the Government the immediate necessity for establishing a new obstetric hospital in Dunedin as the first step toward efficiency in this department, and already two divisions oi the British Medical Association, Wanganui and Taranaki, had given liberany to the endowment fund. Any criticism circulating must, therefore, have originated from doctors who were graduates of English universities and who were not conversant with local needs and conditions.

Dr. Gordon also stated that there was no truth in the statement that officials of the cancer campaign were in any way opposed to the obstetrical appeal. All of them were the warmest supporters of Mr. Victor Bonriey when he visited New Zealand in 1928 to prepare the way for this obstetric appeal, and had assured him that the improvements he was advocating in the midwifery department would soon be made possible in New Zealand. Moreover, the officials of the cancer campaign, knowing that the obstetrical appeal had been pending for four years, and that the Obstetrical Department of the Medical School had, for the last five years, fallen below the standard of efficiency set by the Central Medical Council of Great Britain, admitted that the obstetric appeal was most urgent and have kindly deferred their appeal in some districts in favour of the obstetrical appeal. It was generally understood that the cancer appeal should receive substantial assistance from the Travis bequest for cancer research in New Zealand, and there was not the least rivalry between these two humanitarian appeals. As the Queen's advisers had looked thoroughly into all matters concerning the obstetrical appeal before they submitted the movement to her Majesty’s consideration, her recent cable expressing her personal interest in the appeal and good wishes for its full success establishes beyond all question the urgency of the midwifery appeal.