CHRISTMAS SEAL

Greymouth Evening Star, 7 December 1929, Page 10

CHRISTMAS SEAL

APPEAL FOR WEAK CHILDREN I The Christmas Seal, a combined postage and -anti-tuberculosis stamp, will be procurable at all Post Offices throughout the Dominion on a date which will be publicly notified. The design has been completed, but the printing of many hundreds of thousands of stamps necessarily takes some time. Every effort is being made to expedite the issue of the seal. Half of the fund derived from the stamps will be devoted to the campaign against tuberculosis, including the establishment of health camps for delicate or undernourished children, or children who have a tendency to contract tuberculosis, dr whose surroundings may be such as to lead- to their contracting the infection. The Christmas Seal movement has been most successful in all the leadingcountries of the world. Every citizen, even those with the most slender means can help by placing a seal on his or Her letters or cards of greeting during the few weeks before Christmas. Each seal means the gift of a penny for a most worthy cause, c -The obviously sick will we trust always claim the world’s sympathy and help, but it requires courageous hope to fade the'prevention of disease, radiated by that vision without which we are told a people perish. There are not wanting agencies to help stumbling humanity along the toad; surely the people of New Zealand can add a united effort to raise a fund to provide measures for stamping otit tuberculosis, which in the light of our present-day knowledge we regard as a preventable disease, but which for so long has been regarded as the scourge of mankind.

The Christmas seal has come as the visible symbol of that help. By its effort it is hoped,’ among other considerations to bring , into existence rest homes for debilitated children—that is,-- potentially tubercular children Apart from the protection of the child from early infection, we know that nutrition is the most vital problem we have to consider. It is a social and an economic question. We trust that these rest/camps will be a practical illustration of how to live. Other countries are keenly alive to the prerypptive . aspect'of tuberculosis in its many-sidedness. Let us not lag behind in _Qur effort to do what is humanly possible, and at this season of the year to remember those words which have rung down the ages “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren ye have done it unto Me.”