MATERNITY CARE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 July 1938, Page 8

MATERNITY CARE

(Continued from page 6.) WAIRARAPA CONDITIONS. The careful investigation that had apparently been made in the various districts, Mr Robertson continued, was one of the features of the report and helped to make it a document which was of great interest to every member of the House. The member for Masterton went on to quote passages in the report in which the committee states’-that though the Wairarapa Hospital Board district is well supplied with medical, nursing and hospita. facilities for maternity patients, “the arrangements fall short of what is desirable, inasmuch as patients unable to pay private hospital fees have to go to the Masterton Public Hospital annexe for their confinements. This necessitates transport, generally after labour has begun, for distances of from nine to seventy miles, although in each instance, in the immediate vicinity there is a private hospital which could admit them.

“The present system has considerable disadvantages (it is added), the most obvious of which is the long journey to be undertaken after labour has begun or, alternatively, an early departure from home and a more or less lengthy sojourn in Masterton before labour begins.

“Another disadvantage to those who cannot afford private hospital fees is that while they have received throughout pregnancy ante-natal advice from their own medical man, when the critical time of labour comes they are transferred to the care of a midwife or medical man at Masterton who has no personal knowledge of the patient’s condition through pregnancy and in whom the patient is'likely to have less confidence and therefore suffer from fear much more than she would if she were still in charge of the local medical man who has been attending her. “Minor, but real disadvantages are the inconvenience and expense to the husband and relatives when visiting the patient at Masterton. “It was stated that of 128 patients admitted to the Masterton Hospital for confinement forty-three were brought into Masterton from other towns and thus were taken out of the hands of their usual medical advisers and past private hospitals in which they could have been attended to equally well, in addition to being farther away from their homes than was necessary, with tbe resultant inconvenience and increased expenditure to their relatives when visiting them. If arrangements were made by the board to pay for attendance .on these patients in the hospital nearest their homes, as is done in some other districts, it would be of considerable advantage.” Mr Robertson said he considered that the recommendation implied in the suggestion that the Hospital Board might pay fees at the nearest hospital was one that could be taken advantage of, but there was no doubt that the proposals contained in the social security measures to be introduced later would have a bearing on the problem. With places situated in the East Coast paTt of his electorate seventy miles away, with indifferent roads, patients suffered undue risk and unnecessary pain and discomfort in being conveyed to hospital. The provision to be made under the social security scheme would probably solve this question in its entirety. HELP IN THE HOME. The serious problem of obtaining domestic assistance in country homes, particularly when mothers were being confined, Mr Robertson stated, had been brought about largely owing to tbe low status that had always been given to the domestic assistant. He paid a tribute to the splendid work that was being done in the rural districts by the Women’s Division of the Farmers’ Union, and also to the work of a similar nature in the towns undertaken more recently by the Townswomen's Guilds. Not only were better hours and conditions for domestic assistants needed, but serious consideration should be given to providing homes with all available modern facilities in the way of labour-saving devices. These to a very large extent eliminated domestic drudgery, especially in the rural areas. He felt that the Government that would adopt measures to bring the use of electricity within the reach of the people in the backblocks would confer a boon on the settlers and make its name for all time in the political history of this country. Domestic workers skilled in the use of labour-saving appliances would soon raise the whole of the work in the home to a new and higher status.