TUBERCULOSIS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18999, 23 October 1923, Page 14

TUBERCULOSIS.

TREATMENT OF CHILDREN. HOME OPENED AT CASHMERE . HILLS. (Tsa United Press Association.! CHRISTCHURCH. October For many years the New Zealand rate of mortality from tuberculosis has been going steadily down as the public has come To understand the disease and the best, means of avoiding it. : A further _ t.age in the campaign against tuberculosis ha? been reached by the opening of an open air home on Cashmere Hills for children threatened with the disease, ■ The official opening ceremony was performed this afternoon by Mr H. J. Otley (chairman of the North Canterbury Hospital Board). The children were first received into the Pome this week, and now more than 20 of them are in residence. Already it seems likey that the home will have to b« enlarged before long. What the home is intended to do was explained very well by Dr G .1. Blackmore (superintendent of the board s tuberculosis institutions), who said that in most cases (he consumption which shows itself in adult life is due to an infection received in childhood. No real progress will be made in the campaign against tuberculosis until efforts arc directed to prevent this infection in childhood, or to overcome it before it has done harm. The fresh air home is designed to deal with children who have actually coma in contact with the disease. There are at the present time in the sanatorium and the Coronation Hospital 42 patients, and among them these parents have 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 sufferiiur. These figures relate only to the children of the parents who are actually under treatment, and take no account of the hundreds of children whose parents have been treated in past.years.