HEALTH OF CHILDREN.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIII, Issue 306, 23 December 1912, Page 2

HEALTH OF CHILDREN.

SERIOUS NATIONAL EVTX. LONDON, December 16. A startling report has been issued by ifehe chief medical officer of the Board of Education. The general condition of health of the : children in the elementary schools, says the report, is so extensively defective as to amount to a serious national evil. ' It is added that since 1907, when an Act was passed providing for the medical inspection of school children, 1,500,----000 had been examined annually. The evidence obtained by those examinations showed that a vast number of children were deplorably underfed, avid disease was rife -amongst them. In only one urban area. Burton-on-Trent, was the percentage of healthy children good In only five areas was there over 30 per cent, of well-nourished children. In the great majority of cases the figures Were miserably low. At Blackburn, in the East Riding of (rloucestershire, only 5 per cent, of the children were properly fed, and in Middlesex the percentage was under four. Tn London, 200,000 children had been examined, and half of them were found to be defective. The examining doctors recommended 78,000 for treatment, over 27.000 were treated in the hospitals. The report shows that 26,000 school children of England and Wales are feebleminded, and a large percentage of them are incapable of being educated. The "Times,'-' commenting on the report, says that the general causes arise from conditions of feeding, housing, and overcrowding, which were universally condemned. comforters ought to be prohibited by law. They were responsible for more deaths than any disease.