HOSPITAL TO REMAIN OPEN

By a Staff Reporter ST. TERESA'S, WIMBLEDON, the only ail-Catholic maternity hospital in Britain, will not close, nor will it become a hospital for geriatric and chronically sick patients. According to a spokesman for the hospital "the future is still undecided, but we definitely are not Closing," Suggestions that the hospital would close were made in the Press after the South-Western Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board announced it was withdrawing its 18-year-old National Health Service Contract.
St. Teresa's, run by nuns of the Order of St. Anne, was told it would lose its £60,000 N.H.S. contract from the beginning of 1968 because "alternative maternity accommodation is available."
POLICY
The alternative accommodation is a new 35-bed unit at Queen Mary's Hospital. Roehampton. A spokesman for the Regional Board said he was sorry the nuns were to lose their contract but it was Government policy and it so happened that his region was able to keep pace with the demand for maternity accommodation.
An offer of an alternative contract for providing care for geriatric and chronically sick has been rejected by the hospital because the cost of conversion would be prohibitive.
The decision, warnings of which were first given six months ago, has come as a great blow to the nuns who are just completing a £60,000 extension.
"The new wing, which will increase the hospital's accommodation to 70 beds, would not have been proceeded with had the Regional Board advised us earlier. All buildings and equipment have to be paid for by money raised and we are heavily in debt," said a spokesman.
St. Teresa's, which reserves two thirds of its beds for N.H.S. patients (private patients pay between 35 and 45 guineas a week), has had 19,000 confinements.
"Since 1949 we have earned a reputation that has spread throughout the world," said one of the nuns. "We have people coming to us from as far away as Iran. And we hold the record in Britain for childbirth without maternal death."
Replying to the charge that in the Wimbledon catchment area hospitals were still operating the 48-hour confinement system, the Board spokesman said "this system was introduced for social—not medical
reasons."