MEDICAL INSPECTION OF SCHOOL CHILDREN.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 13737, 19 May 1910, Page 6

MEDICAL INSPECTION OF SCHOOL CHILDREN.

So far as it goes, tho report of the District Health Cffiesr on his medical examination of several hundred children attending the East Christchurch school is distinctly gratifying. .The number of children examined was too small to enable comparisons to be made with thc result- of medical inspection in other countries, but the proportion of children passed as being in absolutely gcod health was satisfactory, and the same may ho said of the weights, -heights, and chest measurements. Kocent reports on the physical condition of tho children attending the' public schools in New South Wales show that in the earlier years, 10 to 12, tho East Christchurch boys and girls tend to ba heavier and taller' than those of New South Wales, but the latter, owing to tho climate encouraging more rapid development, beat them in both respects in the years 13 and 11. The Australian figures, however, deal with the averages of many thousands of children, and not until there is a general systematic inspection of New Zealand children will it be possible to compare the rising generation in the two countries ond prove, thereby,, as no doubt will ho the case, tho superior hcalthfulness of New Zealand. The comparatively large number" of children whom Dr. Finch found to he suffering from adenoids is not, we think, so serious a matter as the number with defective eyesight, not only because, as is ehown, the latter defect is less noticeable by parents and therefore more likely to bo negl-cted, hut because affections of. tlie eyes in youth may leave permanent results. It is to be feared that in some oases they are tho consequence of bad lighting and of desks not properly proportioned to the children -using them. The most pleasing feature of the report is tho statement that the Government are at last considering the adoption of a scheme for the medical examination of the school children of tho Dominion. The Chief Health Officer, it appears, has had this matter in hand for some months/-and tire approaching conference between Dr. Finch and a committee of tho tion Board should do something to forward the movement. Tho Government have been painfully dilatory in this matter, but they must be congratulated on beginning to recognise, its importance. This is a case in which action is emphatically '-better Ittte than never." . , •