TELEPHONE FOR CLINIC

Northern Advocate, 25 May 1936, Page 6

TELEPHONE FOR CLINIC

DEPARTMENT GRANTS CONCESSION Whangarei is to be the first centre in New Zealand where the dental clinic will be connected with the telephone service at a concession rate. Representations to this end have been made consistently over the past fifteen months by the Whangarei Country Schools Dental Committee. Previously the departmental reply had been that the telephone connection would be charged for at full business rate. The committee pointed out that the Plunket Society, which occupies the adjoining rooms, received the telephone at residential. rates, and that the same concession applied to numerous sports bodies. On the other hand, dental attention for school children was a national service, and as •such, merited the fullest consideration.

The matter was taken up with the Ministerial authorities by Mr. J. G. Barclay, M.P. for Marsden, and the Dental Committee has now received an intimation that the telephone will be installed at the clinic at residential rates.

“The clinic treats children from 30 country schools,” said the secretary of the committee this morning, “and the linking up with the telephone service will facilitate organisation to an appreciable extent. The nurse will now be able to get in touch with the patient and the patient with the nurse.”