HEALTH OF NEW ZEALANDERS

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21246, 18 August 1934, Page 14

HEALTH OF NEW ZEALANDERS

♦___ VIEWS OF THE GOVERNORGENERAL | BETTER MILK DIET SUGGESTED ! "Why, with your excellent climate, are your hospitals so fall?" asked the Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe, in an address to trampers at the combined meeting of the Sunlight: League and the Youth Hostel Association last evening. His Excellency asked some searching questions about the health of New Zcalanders, ar.d offered some sugges-' tions to investigators of the problem. The hospitals involved a very ; heavy financial charge on the public, and it had to be considered whether it would not be a very fine financial investment to reduce their activities, said his Excellency. The Plunket system ar.d NewZealand's low infantile mortality was the .answer to the suggestion that the full hospitals might be caused by insufficient nutriment of; babies at er shor.lv after birth, said ; Lord Bledisloe. Was it insufficient : or unsuitable nutriment given ir. i early childhood, causing youthful, malnutrition with constitutional abnormality throughout life? _ He was not so sure ef that, said his Excel- : lency, and the Plur.ket system die not help quite so much there. Was it lack of balance in the human ration after childhood had passed? Was it due to lack of regular sr.d hcalthv exercise? Or was :t due to intemperance—r.ct necessarily the intemperance of alcohol, but of outer kinds? At least as many persons died front: overeating as from, overdrinking. said his Excellency. Lack of Lime ' His Excellency suggested that the cause ef some of the ailments might be found to exist ir. the nature cf the country. In various parts of the Dominion there was a very serious lack cf lime and in some other places, cf phosphates. He thought | himself right in suggesting that the structure of bones and teeth was largely made up of phosphate o£ lime, and that unless a human being took into the system phosphate of lime, he could not be expected to have bone fully provided and perfectly sound. In"New Zealand there was a very low consumption of milk by children. when compared with that ir. : other countries, ar.d in some districts | the milk was seriously deficient in S lime, continued his Excellency. I Might that not be one of the rea- ! sons that New Zealand children sufj fered from diseases of the teeth and | malnutrition and the disease; fcllowJ mg malnutrition. In England, where i definite tests were carried out | among slum children, it had been j proved that it was far better ever. Jto give children milk which was i even to a certain extent unclean. ! rather than to have them without [ milk at all. i It had been found that when cr.ilf dren who had been getting ir.sufficii ent milk had their milk diet inS creased, at the order of a public I authority in England, the incidence " of tuberculosis in children had . decreased remarkably, if.ere was a surplus supply of milk in both the Old Country and New Zealand, and would it not be true humanitarianism as well as a good financial investment to see that young people had a sufficiency of milk, even at the public expense, his Excellency asked.