ACTION CALLED FOR

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 171, 22 July 1942, Page 6

ACTION CALLED FOR

SOCIAL DISEASE SPREADS

WELLINGTON SUGGESTION

(0.C.) WELLINGTON, this day. -The spread of venereal disease in Wellington was assuming appalline dimensions, said Mr. E. E. Brookin** at a meeting of the Wellington Metropolitan Patriotic Committee c T V , as , suggested that the Minister of Health should be approached to give the police wider powers, taking up offending girls and making them submit to medical examination. It was stated that the infected girls ca me from ail parts of the country. The position in Auckland was stated to be equally appalling, and the suggestion was made that the Minister of Health should be asked to take steps, not only in Wellington, but elsewhere in New Zealand.

Colonel A. Cowles said that the matter would be brought up at the next meeting of the R.S.A., and the association would be asked to take up the question with the Government. It had already been taken up by visiting sevicemen and by the army. Something effective would have to be done. If all organisations concerned with the welfare of citizens and of women got together the Government could be made to do something of an effective nature, but it was probably being held up by well-meaning women's organisations. Various means of arresting the spread of the disease were discussed by the meeting, and instances were jjjfhere the action taken during the War had greatly minimised its dissemlfiation.