Maternal mortality : report of meeting held at Friends' House. Euston Road on November 15, 1932
1932-11 1932 1930s 36 pages I want to go forward, and I would like this Conference to pass this resolution. As a member of two Maternity and Child Welfare Committees, I have a great interest in this. I would like the Ministry to decide now and say to the Local Authorities, "There must be no...
| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
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| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
London : Maternal Mortality Committee,
November 1932
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/C1BE72F2-E0B7-4C49-9814-DCB53E71CC94 http://hdl.handle.net/10796/33F759E8-0B97-435E-91E5-54D06D7C1133 |
| Summary: | 1932-11
1932
1930s
36 pages
I want to go forward, and I would like this Conference to pass this resolution. As a member of two Maternity and Child Welfare Committees, I have a great interest in this. I would like the Ministry to decide now and say to the Local Authorities, "There must be no economy in Maternity and Child Welfare." It is no good beating about the bush. My own Council is setting up a Sub-Committee and its job is to report on the health services. What is the position? As has already been mentioned, there has already been the cut in National Health Insurance. Next year it is going to be worse. You have thousands of women who are not insured, whose husbands have never worked for ten years. We have people going day by day to the Poor Law Authorities and we all know that the mothers will not go to the Poor Law doctor except as a last resort. I think here is only one way of getting proper ante-natal service in Rural Districts miles from Clinics. What we have done is to pay the family doctor for doing the ante-natal work. They said the Approved Societies would object, but we did not care ; we went on with it with the approval of the Ministry, and we have good results. In connection with this, you can't get co-ordination with hospitals until you get a skilled medical staff that is ready to do it. I am sorry that the medical service has not been more represented here to-day. I can mention two hospitals that refuse at any cost to take a maternity case into their hospital. I know of others where they will not agree to have a skilled person from outside. I should like to ask the Minister of Health first, that no Local Authority is asked to economise on its Public Health Service, and, secondly, that the Minister insists, before any Authority should get its grant, that they show a very substantial development in the work of the Maternity and Child Welfare Department. The Minister has said you must have no retreat in this work. Miss ELSIE HALL (Midwives' Institute Council) : Madam Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, what I want to bring to your notice is this : it is a decided finding of the Departmental Committee that a midwife should be in attendance at all confinements whether a doctor is there or not. If the medical profession would make a stand against the employment of a handy woman and apply to the Local Authorities (who since 1918 have had the power to provide that skilled attendance of midwives), then I believe there would be a decided improvement, not only in morbidity, but in Maternal Mortality. Now, another statement in the Report of the Departmental Committee is that 50 per cent. of women who died of puerperal (30)
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| Physical Description: | TEXT |