Health Stamps

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 285, 29 August 1935, Page 11

Health Stamps

Sir, —In 1927, while employed at Otaki Hospital. I gave my superior officer Dr. Irwin, a plan, complete with examples, of the health stamps, and the way they were used in America. Depicted in the literature and on the etamps was the double-cross, which i? carried through life by chronic sufferers of tuberculosis. ' I asked Dr. Irwin to have the Department of Health to take up the idea as nothing was or is being done for the suffers carrying the double cross. She approached Dr. Ada Paterson and I received advice that my idea was accepted by the department, but that it would be used for Dr. Ada Paterson’s scheme for delicate children. I was disappointed as I felt that root causes were not being tackled, but I agreed to Dr. Patersons request. Officially, that was the last I heard of my scheme. But at last came the health stamps at 2d. each; we know the dismal failure financially, the health stamps have been, because they have been presented in the wrong manner to the public. Now we are having street days to boost the sales of health stamps, when the scheme, if it had been properly used and presented in a popular manner (not at 2d. a stamp), would, as it should, be absolutely self-supporting. Is it too late to inject life into a scheme which is at present suffering from an overdose of officialdom and not enough understanding of what will attract the buying PU The sums collected from the 2d. health stamp (Id. for postage and Id for health camp) each year amount to a pittance, and I might add as the person responsible for the stamp idea here, the failure of the health stamp as a means of raising funds, fills me, the sponsor, with bitter disappointment. —I am, etc., WINIFRED MACDONALD. Wellington, August 28.