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Show last year's service. Part of the increase was due to natural growth and part was due to the greater number of maternity cases; a 44.6% increase over our previous highest record in 1937. We had 201 mothers come for delivery, resulting in 205 births, for there was another record number of twin births, one set of girls, and three of boys! We are now getting many cases, all of whose children, some four, some five, have been born in the Hospital. The mothers feel, we are told, that if the child is born in the Hospital it won't die in later childhood, whereas a very large proportion of the children born at home under the usual dirty conditions do not survive the first two years of life, even if they are fortunate enough not to die of tetanus during the first ten days. Thus the maternity and pediatrics departments are proving their worth to the Community. This number of maternity cases is crowding out of our wards the medical and surgical cases, and we are faced with the necessity of getting a ward of their own for the mothers and babies. We need too a delivery room for we can no longer count on having the use of the operating room which has been heretofore the only room available for deliveries. Some days three babies arrive in a morning; operations cannot wait on babies, nor will babies wait on the completion of an operation! So we are making plans for a maternity ward complete with delivery room, a ward and private rooms for sixteen patients, - 3 - |