One Way to Health

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22678, 5 April 1939, Page 10

One Way to Health

Speaking at the opening of the new Hastings Central School, the Minister for Education, who is also Minister for Health, made a few short but interesting observations on the results of the school health services. The issue of a regular milk ration, he said, had already been proved in some schools, to have increased the height and weight of the children, and mental and physical advance had gone on together. The work of the dental clinics had also been assisted by the milk scheme; and it had been “ definitely established ” that dental decay, which had undermined the health of thousands of children, was decreasing. These are welcome statements, which would be still more valuable in fuller form. The evidence upon which the Minister’s statements rest should be made public, in as clear and educative a form as possible; and the system of measurements and records that produces it should be extended. It may be assumed that Mr Fraser is able to speak of “ some schools ” only, because the necessary records have not been taken everywhere, or have not been developed. It hardly needs to be said that such evidence as this gains in value with every step towards completeness, not merely in corroboration, but in disclosing variations and discrepancies, the causes of which will require special study. But there is a quite different point, suggested -by the Minister’s remarks and well worth attention at a time when the Government is labouring to organise an ambitious but unbalanced national health scheme. One of its obvious weaknesses is that it lays tremendous stress on the treatment of disease and very little on prevention. It would be inaccurate to say that the scheme gives no place to preventive medicine and to fundamental measures of race-building; but it is quite accurate to say that the place it gives them and the attention thq Government is giving them are disproportionately small. The New Zealand branch of the British Medical Association, in a memorandum issued last year, did not fail to warn the Government of this error in principle and method. The Government took no heed. But the Minister for Education, at Hastings, rightly congratulated himself upon results which, if he took their hint as Minister for Health, would ‘ fill him with useful doubt. New Zealand makes an admirable beginning in the care of the race with its prenatal and natal welfare system. It leaves to chance the years between infancy and school entry. The health services in the* primary schools take up the charge again and, within their limits, which are still narrow, carry it well. In the secondary schools they are, it may as well be said, totally discontinued. And the Government’s present purpose, after this interrupted care*of infant, child, and adolescent, is to make good the defects of the system with free bottles of medicine and hospital beds for the sick adult.