NOT MUCH TO LEARN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18887, 9 December 1924, Page 10

NOT MUCH TO LEARN.

AMERICAN HEALTH METHODS.

dental SYSTEMS COMPARED.

NEW ZEALAND FAR AHEAD.

PRAISE FOR PLUNKET WORK.

The methods followed by the public health authorities in tho great centres of Great JJritain an the United States were closely investigated by Dr. J. Cumpston, Chief Health Officer for the Commonwealth of Australia, who arrived by tho Niagara yesterday. Dr. Ciimpson also visited Paris, whero he attended an international conferenco of Government health officers, the chief business of which was to revise the quarantine systems of the countries represented.

Dr. Cumpston said he had not seen anywhere any system as good as that of the dental control of school children in force in New Zealand. He was of the opinion the Plunket system operating in tho Dominion was better organised and controlled, and more widely distributed, than anything ho had seen in the United States. Tho Americans did fine work in this direction, but taken as a piece of national work the New Zealand system was far ahead of anything that had come under his observation.

While there were somo things in tho public health administration in the United States which could with benefit bo adopted in these southern countries, and thero were certain phases of the administration of tho health of the people which suggested modification in the system in operation in Australia, the average of prosperity, education, and happiness of the people of New Zealand and Australia, made many of the drastic methods in force in American communities quite unnecessary here. Dr. Cumpston, who is accompanied by Mrs._ Cumpston, will spend some weeks in New Zealand, before going on to Australia, and will take the opportunity of conferring with the Director-General of Health, Dr. T. H. A. Valintine, and his staff, in order to bring himself up-to-date on the methods employed in New Zealand.