Plunket Society Jubilee

Fifty years ago, on May 14, 1907, Dr. Truby King and a handful of supporters founded the Plunket Society in Dunedin and in so doing pioneered infant welfare work in New Zealand. From this small beginning the Society has spread throughout the Dominion, doing vital work which helps every section of the community.

Today, the Society has 100 branches, 490 sub-branches, and 240 trained nurses, who care for 90 per cent, of all New Zealand babies.

On May 14, its Golden Jubilee day, the Society will be very much in the minds of most New Zealanders. On that day, through 16 radio stations, a national appeal for funds is being made to enable the Society to improve and expand its facilities to keep up with the country's expanding birthrate.

On this and the next two pages, "Photo News" prints pictures taken in the Gisborne clinics, showing babies and their mothers receiving attention. The Society gives advice and attention to children from the pre-natal stage up to the age of five years.

×

 

• 

Officers of the Society keep a careful check on their wee charges. Lynette Webber makes an appealing picture in the scales basket. With her: Mrs Merle Webber, her mother, and Sister Preston, officer in charge at Gisborne.

×

 

• 

At Te Hapara clinic, Mrs T. McCarthy brings little Paula in for attention from Sister Mulhern.

By 1975, 18 years from now, it is estimated that the Dominion's population will have risen to 3,000,000. The present drive for funds is to enable the Plunket Society to prepare itself to handle this phenomenal increase, for which are needed improvements and extensions to Hospitals, more Plunket rooms, special work for mothers and babies, and a general programme of expansion.

×

 

• 

Mothers waiting their turn for consultations at the Plunket Rooms. Left to right, Mrs J. Cameron, Mrs W. Bedlington, Mrs C. J. Smith.

×

 

• 

Lynette Webber isn't much interested in her chest measurement yet, but it's important to Sister Preston right now.

×

 

• 

Weight is important too: Wayne McKnight on the scales