NEW HEALTH BILL

Evening Post, Volume CI, Issue 111, 11 May 1921, Page 7

NEW HEALTH BILL

STRONG OBJECTIONS EXPRESSED

Mrs. A. R. Atkinson, who spoke at the annual meeting of the Women's I National Council last night on behalf of the Society for tie Protection of Women and Children (one of those affiliated to the council) was emphatic in her condemnation of the Health Bill as it stands at present. Mrs. Atkinson mentioned that the provisions of the Bill had been kept very secret, only the two ladies who were employed by the Government to speak on health subjects to women having copfes of the Bill. She had obtained one, however, and was horrified to find that the provision^ included some of the' most objectionable ones of the old CD. Act, and which had been found to press terribly on women in particular. Mrs.- Atkinson said : "Anybody may give information if they consider that "any person is suffering from CD., and that person may be taken up and examined compulsorily." Tho D.O.R.A. caused great danger and suffering in England, and it had been found that 80 per cent, of the persons notified under that Act were clean and healthy. Mrs. Atkinson explained that the CD. is difficult to locate by ordinary observation, even by an experienced person; a cold in the head, or sore breaking out, and other. simple things might be mistaken by a vivid imagination or a person who wanted to cause trouble., Nothing but an exhaus* tive blood test would give certainty. Arrest on suspicion was a most cruel and unjustifiable proceeding. Mrs. Atkinson also objected strenuously to tho names of persons suffering from the disease . being given up by doctors under any circumstances whatever. This would simply tend to "drive the diseases underground." ,To cope reasonably and properly with the disease the finest possible clinics were neecssary, with assurance of absolute privacy. No lecturing of those who came should be indulged in, but they should receive encouraging and helpful assistance in every form. It had been reported that the New Zealand clinics already established were "an unqualified success," and no cases had fallen out of treatment. Some, in one clinic or another, -had been temporarily lost sight of, but the patients had changed residence, perhaps, and appeared at another clinic. This being so, Mrs. Atkinson urged that the way to cope with the disease was to establish properly private clinics with equal consideration shown to women and men, and the people would be' far more safeguarded than by arrest, or by "telling the name" on the part of medical men or women. Mrs. Atkinson alluded to the fact that the same unfortunate provisions had been incorporated in the Australian Act, with the result that no less than 40 cases—all women —had been notified, and the victims compulsorily examined. All had been found perfectly healthy.