HEALTH AND HOUSING

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 13 September 1937, Page 8

HEALTH AND HOUSING

GREAT INVESTMENT IN PUBLIC INTEREST (British Ollirial Wireless) RUGBY, 9th September. The Minister of Health, Sir Kingsley Wood, addressing Hie Welsh local authorities at Cardiff to-day. announced a number of national health projects and social schemes to be undertaken during the next 12 months. He hoped early in the new session to introduce in the House of Commons two important measures, one to reduce the age limit for the award of pensions to the blind, and the other to provide medical care for young persons who had left school. At least 300,000 new homes were required to complete the present slum clearance and overcrowding programme, the Minister said. The campaign to make motherhood still safer would be intensified with the aid of a new midwifery service. The problem of nutrition must increasingly occupy the attention of the nation and the basis of nutrition policy would be further extended by making provision to enable milk to be made safer and by extending its supply -further to mothers and children. Local authorities would be in a position to extend their present schemes under which milk was made available cither free or at a reduced price, as circumstances might require. The nation must not only ensure safeguards against disease, but actively promote good health. Large sums were spent on health and housing services—greater, perhaps, than in any other country in the world—but this money was a great national investment for it returned a high dividend in better homes, improved health and longer lives.