PREVALENCE OF GOITRE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19512, 22 June 1925, Page 8

PREVALENCE OF GOITRE.

A VALUABLE REPORT. PREVENTIVE MEASURES SUGGESTED. iPes United Press Association.) WELLINGTON, June 20. The Health Department has received a valuable report from Professor Ilercus, of Otago University, with whom have been associated Professor Benson (professor of geology) and Mr C. L. Carter (lecturer on chemistry), on endemic goitre in Now Zealand.

The report states that, as indicating the prevalence of goitre in New Zealand it ma£ be mentioned that the routine school medical inspection for 1924 shows that out of a total of 55,000 children examined goitre of different degrees existed in 18.33 per cent., made up as followslncipient, 12.53 per cent.; small, 5 per cent.; medium, 7 per cent.; large, U per cent. In 1920 an endeavour was made to establish accurately the extent to which thyroid enlargement prevailed amongst the school children of Canterbury aud Westland. The majority of the children examined were in the age group of five to 14 years. The results are summarised as follows;-—Of the children examined, 39 per cent, were found to have normal, and til per cent, enlarged, thyroids. The report says that, assuming that the fundamental factor in the causation of goitre is a deficiency in the intake of iodine, the prevention of the disease should be a comparatively simple problem. “We believe that the best method of prophylaxis. considered on physiological grounds, as well as on those of efficiency and economy, would be derived from the dailj ingestion of minute amounts of iodine by the utilisation for all culinary and table purposes of an iodised salt, in which one part of potassium iodide had been added to 100,000 parts of sodium chloride.”