One hundred and sixty seven (82%) of the 204 practising South Australian rural GP obstetricians responded to a questionnaire on training, skills and approach to high-risk obstetrics. The mean length of training was 8.5 months; 78% of GP obstetricians held a diploma. There was a mean of 13 years experience and 22 deliveries per year. However, 26.3% of practitioners had stopped obstetrics in the previous 12 months and cited indemnity insurance and lifestyle factors as the main reason for stopping. The GPs practised a wide range of skills; forceps (96%), Caesarean section (42%) and had good access to epidural services (83.6%), blood transfusions (91%) and specialist advice. High-risk obstetrics such as twin pregnancy, fetal growth retardation, insulin-dependent diabetes and preterm labour, are avoided by most rural GP obstetricians. The mean visual analogue comfort score for providing obstetric care was 7.46 (2.16) and correlated with length of training (p = 0.008) and number of deliveries per year (p = 0.02). Health authorities must continue to support and encourage country GP obstetricians to provide this essential service to rural women.

Summary Amniotic fluid from 79 European and Asian mothers at term was examined for those biochemical changes which in postnatal life are associated with slow growth, a poor diet or frank malnutrition. Amniotic fluid from normal pregnancies of both races contained proportionally less urea nitrogen, more uric acid nitrogen and α‐amino nitrogen, and more free hydroxyproline than was found in urine from pregnant mothers and the newborn. Some of these differences may reflect a relative reduction in nutrient supply in late pregnancy while others are due to immaturity of various biochemical systems. These explanations do not account for all the differences. Compared to results in normal mothers, the Asian mothers with light‐for‐dates babies showed changes suggesting undernutrition (high amniotic fluid alkaline ribonuclease and ‐amino nitrogen). The European mothers with light‐for‐dates babies had biochemical evidence of reduced growth (low amniotic fluid total hydro‐xyproline) but not evidence of undernutrition. Mothers with light‐for‐dates babies in both races had a high amniotic fluid uric acid nitrogen; the cause of this is uncertain. The biochemical measurements were significantly different in the mothers with light‐for‐dates babies and were a more accurate prediction of poor intrauterine growth than clinical criteria alone. Nevertheless, the overlap with normal pregnancies was so great as to limit the clinical usefulness of these measurements in the management of an individual pregnancy.

SUMMARY Hair growth measurements are a sensitive indicator of nutrition and we have assessed their value in the perinatal period. The proportion of growing roots and their diameter were studied at birth in 114 babies and repeated 3 weeks later in 29 low birthweight babies. Intrauterine malnutrition resulted in thinner roots but the changes after birth were not related to nutrition and these measurements will not be useful in feeding studies in this period. At birth, gestational age and sex affected the hair root, and it may be important to recognise these differences if the hair root is used in biochemical screening tests. We have used a new simple technique for measuring the root diameter using an image-splitting eye-piece.Hair, one of the fastest growing tissues, is rapidly affected by nutritional and endocrine changes (Platt, 1965) and recently quantitative measurements of hair root morphology have been used to study nutrition in children and adults (Bradfield et al., 1968;Bradfield, 1971

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