CEREBRAL PALSY TREATMENT

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25589, 2 September 1948, Page 3

CEREBRAL PALSY TREATMENT

DISCUSSION BY CRIPPLED CHILDREN SOCIETY (P.A.) WELLINGTON, Sept. 1. Dr. E. R. Carlson’s report on cerebral palsy in New Zealand came before the annual conference of the New Zealand Crippled Children .ciety to-day, and will br considered in more detail to-morrow. Moving its adoption, Dr. J. L. Will said he was not in agreement with the proposals for the Rotorua Hospital put forward earlier in the conference by the Minister of Health (Miss M. B. Howard) as he considered it was an attempt to start in the middle of the programme. Features of the Carlson report he wished to stress were the need for home treatment as soon as medical diagnosis was made, a nursery day school at the kindergarten, diagnostic and evaluation centres to determine what a child could be with training, residential hospital schools for training, education, and treatment, and ♦hen training centres to make them industrially independent. His visit overseas had satisfied him that money spent, even spent lavishly, would bring a worthwhile return. Mr V S. Jacobs (Dunedin) said there were 600 cerebral palsy cases in New Zealand. He considered efforts should not be confined to the hospital at Rotorua which, he understood, would cater for 30 patients.