PREVALENCE OF GOITRE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 22 June 1925, Page 9

PREVALENCE OF GOITRE.

VALUE OF lODINE

(BY TELEGRAPH. PRESS ASSOCIATION.) WELLINGTON, June 20. The Health Department has received a valuable report on the evidence or goitre i u New Zealand from Professor Benson, professor of geology, and air. C. L. Carter, lecturer on chemistry. The report states that, as indicating the prevalence of goitre in New Zealand* it may be mentioned that the routine school medical inspection 1924 shows that out of a total of 55,000 children examined goitre (of varying degree) existed in 18.33 per cent., made up as follows: Incipient 12.53 per cent., small 5 per cent., medium 7 per cent., large 11 per cent. In 1920 an endeavour was made to ■establish accurately the extent to which thyroid enlargement prevailed amongst the school children of Canterbury and Westland. The majority of the children examined were jn the age group of five to fourteen years. 'the results were summarised as follow : 13.16 per cent, of the ehidren were examined; 39 per cent, were found to have normal and 61 per cent, enlarged thyroids. The report says that, assuming that the fundamental factor in the causation of goitre is a deficient intake of iodine, the prevention of the disease should he- a comparatively simple problem. “We believe that the best method of prophylaxis, considered •on physiological grounds as well as those of efficiency and economy, would be derived vom a daily ingestion of minute amounts of iodine by the. utilisation for all culinary and table purposes of an iodinised salt in which one part of patassium iodide had been added to 109,050 of sodium chloride.” -