TUBERCULAR SOLDIERS.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume X, Issue 142, 31 May 1920, Page 5

TUBERCULAR SOLDIERS.

GOVERNMENT’S RESPONSIBILITIES. DEPUTATION FROM R.S.A. Wellington, May 31. At the Returned Soldiers’ Conference the question of tubercular patients was discussed at length. - Dr. Boxei said he wished all T.B. men to understand that the Association had their best interests at heart. He strongly urged that “a chest sweep up” be made.

The conference decided to urge that T.B. men, on being discharged from sanatoriums should be provide!! by the Defence Department with permanently suitable shelters properly furnished with bed and bedding etc; that where a patient owns a house having a verandah, the Defence Department should defray the expenses of having the verandah glassed in and furnished with bedding etc.; that the personnel of all sanatoria should, where possible be ex T.B. men; that compulsory examination be made every six months of T.B. men, out patients and dischargees (not for pensions), by a specialist or by the specialist who treated the man’s case; and that the Defence Department be responsible for the transportation of patients to the specialist j that it be a recorfimendation to the Director-Gene-ral of Medical Services to send a chest expert through New Zealand to examine all chest cases from the N.Z.E.F. Dr. Boxer stated that in approaching the T.B. question, the point of making each man his own employer should not be overlooked. A man might have the greatest willingness in the world, but sometimes on account of his disability he would not always be able to work as hard for an employer as he would like to do.

It -was decided that a special medical committee of five be set up by the N'.Z. R.S.A. to act in an advisory capacity to headquarters, the personnel to consist of three returned chest experts and two T.B. patients. The conference also resolved that where medical superintendents of sanatoria recommend that treatment ui Australia or elsewhere would be beneficial to T.B. patients, the cost of their transport and treatment abroad should be born by the Government. A deputation will wait on the Prime Minister to-day to place the remits of the conference regarding T.B’s. before him, and it was recommended that stress be made of the point mentioned by Dr. Boxer.