GENERAL ELECTION

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 90, 13 October 1938, Page 24

GENERAL ELECTION

TOO MUCH ILL HEALTH

PREVENTIVE STEPS

MRS. GILMER'S PROPOSALS

Attention to the amount of sickness

in New Zealand and to the present need of more and bigger hospitals and dental clinics was drawn by Mrs. Knox Gilmer, Liberal candidate for Wellington North, at St. Peter's * Church Hail, last night. Mrs. Gilmer advocated a national nutritional inquiry.

Mrs. Gilmer referred to the big dental clinic being built in Upper Willis Street. Dental clinics, she said, were being built all over the country and also hospitals. Both were very necessary, but why was -there so much sickness in this beautiful country. She referred to the results of exam ma lions of children entering the schools. The question was one that was worrying her and she wanted to be put into Parliament so that she could ask as a woman why it was that 80 per cent, of the children were not physically fit and the increase in the admissions to the public hospitals were very much out of proportion to the increase in the population. Why was it when Lord Bledisloe was here he was surprised that so many of the inmates of public hospitals had previously suffered from malnutrition? Why was it that the information New Zealand's representatives at Geneva gained was not put into use. She was in favour of a State Department for the prevention of ill health, and wanted to see a full co-ordination of all the sciences.

Mrs. Gilmer said she was also in favour of a State food values department. Very little had been heard about nutrition in New Zealand. Anyone who attempted it was regarded as a crank. The question of food values was one that was arousing discussion in other countries and was being taken up by ihe Governments of the day. If'she were elected she would do all she could to find out why so many people were filling the hospitals. The president of the British Medical Association said that most of the, sickness could be prevented if taken in time and studied.. She thought such advice should be accepted and acted upon and that the various bureaux she had .mentioned should be established in New Zealand as they were in other countries.

About 600, many of them women, attended the meeting, filling the hall. There were some interjections from the back and there was dissent from this quarter when a motion of thanks to and confidence in the candidate was put to the meeting, but the manner in which it was carried left no room for doubt. The motion was moved by Mr. John Carroll and seconded by Mrs. Roderick McKenzie, wh ■, said the chairman (Mr. Len McKenzie), was the wife of one of the Ministers of the Crown in Mrs. Gilmer's father's Parliament. It was wonderful, Mr. McKenzie remarked, how the West Coasters stuck together.