STUDENT HEALTH SERVICES

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27592, 24 February 1955, Page 2

STUDENT HEALTH SERVICES

NEW FACILITIES AT UNIVERSITY HEALTH DEPARTMENT SUPPLIES STAFF Health services for students of Canterbury University College have now been made available by the Health Department. The new scheme provides for a diagnostic service, which includes auditory and visual acuity tests and miniature chest radiography, to be limited to first-year students in 1955. A health Counselling service will cover any medical condition, adjustment difficulties, and medical or other problems confronting students inside or outside the university environment. At first, this service will be available only to freshers (full-time or parttime) and to other full-time students. Appropriate cases under both services may be referred for further investigation and treatment to private doctors. In the past, only X-ray facilities were provided. The students’ health scheme had come into being after negotiations lasting for several years between the Canterbury University College Students’ Association and the College Council, and also between the New Zealand Students’ Association and the Health Department, said the president of the Canterbury College Association (Mr N. Beech) last evening. “The Health Department has made a particularly generous gesture in supplying staff and equipment to carry out the services,”- he said. Co-ordination of Schemes Though all students’ associations in the four main centres had been negotiating for their own health schemes, their activities had been co-ordinated by the New Zealand Association, he said. Auckland University College had a health scheme operated in conjung|ion with the Health Department, but the Otago University’s scheme, which had been in operation for several years, was 'part of the School of Preventive Medicine. The New Zealand Students’ Association wants to have a fully-developed health scheme at all major colleges, and its ultimate aim is to have a resident doctor, on the same status as a member of the lecturing staff, at each college,” said Mr Beech.