THE WHITE PLAGUE

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11656, 22 October 1923, Page 5

THE WHITE PLAGUE

PROGRESS IN SOUTH OPEN-AIR HOME FOR TREATMENT OF CHILDREN. PATIENTS ALREADY ADMITTED. Per Press Association. CHRISTCHURCH, October 21. For many years the New Zealand rate of mortality from tuberculosis has been going steadily down as tho public has come to understand the disease and the best means of avoiding it. A further stage in the campaign against T.B. has been reached by the opening of an open-air home on Cashmere Hills, Christchurch, for children threatened with the disease, Tho official opening ceremony was performed this afternoon by Mr H. J. Otley, chairman of the North Canterbury Hospital Board. FILLING UP ALREADY. Children were first received into the home this week, and as there are more than 20 of them in residence already, it seems likely that the home will have to be enlarged before long. What the home is intended to do was explained very well by Dr G. J. Blackmore, superintendent of the board’s tuberculosis institutions, who said that in most cases the consumption which shows itself in adult life is due to an infection received in childhood. STEPS TOWARDS PREVENTION. No real progress will be made in the campaign against tuberculosis until efforts are directed to prevent this infection in childhood, or to overcome it before it has done harm. The fresh air home je designed to deal with children who have actually come in contact with tho disease. There are at the present time in the sanatorium and Coronation Hospital 42 parents who have a total of 70 children under 14 years of age. For the most part these children are having nothing done for them to prevent them from developing the disease from which their parents are suffering. These figures relate only to tbe children of parents who are actually under treatment, and take no account of the hundreds of children whose parents have been treated in past.^ears.