PREVALENCE OF GOITRE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19050, 22 June 1925, Page 10

PREVALENCE OF GOITRE.

INSPECTION OF CHILDREN. lODISED SALT RECOMMENDED. [BY TELEGRAPH.— PIIESS ASSOCIATION.] WELLINGTON. Saturday. The Health Department has received a valuable report on endemic goitre in New Zealand from Professor Hercus, of Otago, with whom have been associated Professor Benson, professor of geology, and Mr. C. L. Carter, lecturer on chemistry. The report states that, as indicating the prevalence of goitre in New Zealand, it may be mentioned that routine school medical inspection for 1924 shows that out of a total of 55,000xhildren examined, goitre, in different degrees, existed as follows:; —Incipient 12.53 per cent., small 5 per cent., medium 7 per cent., large 11 per cent. v\Rn endeavour was made in 1920 to establish accurately the extent to which thyroid enlargement prevailed among the school children of Canterbury and Westland. The majority of the children examined were in the age group of 5 to 14 years. The results wero summarised as follows: —39 per cent.were found to have normal and 61 per cent, enlarged thyroids. The report says that, assuming that the fundamental factor in the causation of goitre is deficient intake of iodine, the prevention of disease should bo a comparatively simple problem. "We believe that the best method of prophylaxis, considered on physiological grounds, as well as those of efficiency and economy, would be derived from the daily ingestion of minute amounts of iodine, by the utilisa,tion for all culinary and table purposes of an iodised salt in which one part- of potassium iodide had been added to 100,000 of sodium chloride."