Karitane hospitals
New Zealand hospitals for babies that were run by the Plunket Society (1907-1980)
The Karitane Hospitals were six hospitals in New Zealand run by the Plunket Society, located in Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin, Invercargill, Wanganui and Wellington. They were established as training hospitals for Karitane nurses and cared for babies with malnutrition and other dietetic complaints, and premature babies. They also offered mother care training and assistance. The first hospital opened in 1907 and the hospitals were closed between 1978 and 1980 due to financial difficulties and changes in society and maternity services.
History
Until 1939 the services in Karitane hospitals were generally free, though some users did pay for care. The costs of running the hospitals were largely covered by the fees paid by Karitane nurse trainees. With the changes in health care instituted by the Labour government in the 1930s–1940s the hospitals' monopoly on caring for premature babies was lost. In 1939 (under the Social Security Act) treatment in hospitals became free and the Karitane hospitals were not permitted to charge fees, though the government did subsidise mothers and babies being cared for. By the late 1950s Karitane hospitals were facing financial difficulties and possible closure but in 1958 the government made emergency grants to keep the hospitals open. The 1959 Consultative Committee on Infant and Pre-school Health Services in New Zealand investigated Plunket and the role of and need for the Karitane hospitals.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Karitane hospitals” is new Zealand hospitals for babies that were run by the Plunket Society (1907-1980). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Karitane, hospitals and Zealand, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “new Zealand hospitals for babies that were run by the Plunket Society (1907-1980)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 8, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q104814990. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1907, 1978, 1980 and 1939.
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This entry incorporates text from “Karitane hospitals” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.