THE PARTY OF HUMANITY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22718, 2 November 1935, Page 12

THE PARTY OF HUMANITY

In the address at Itoslyn this week in which he bestrode the humanitarian plank of the Labour Party's platform Dr M'Millan made a considerable flourish with statistical information furnished in reports of the Health Department with the object of showing the prevalence of under-nourish-ment among the children of New Zealand. Doubtless his audience was duly impressed at the magnitude of the army of under-nourished children which, by a simple process of calculation, lie built up on the basis of 5.64 per hundred of school children medically examined. This percentage in his representation might be some new and atrocious discovery. The inference that was invited was that there is an enormous amount of malnutrition in New Zealand, and that the Government is in one way or another to blame, but that the Labour Party appreciates the position and will put it right. The official figures in the reports on School Hygiene will bear more light than Dr M'Millan has thrown upon them. In regard to the latest returns, the Director of School Hygiene observed: " It is evident that the incidence of malnutrition as indicated by these returns is practically the same as that noted a year ago. The very slight rise for the whole group examined —5.64 per cent, in 1934 as against 5.48 per cent, in 1933 —is very largely due to the fact that the proportion of children included from the primer classes, which as a ,

general rule show a slightly higher percentage of malnutrition, is greater than last year." It is instructive to look back somewhat further. The percentage of subnormal nutrition among school children examined in 1932 was 5.81, that for 1931 was 6.68, that for 1930 was 6.30, that for 1929 was 7.06, and that for 1928 was 6.84. It is apparent from these figures that, so far as the results of the examination of thousands of school children every year may be taken as. a guide, the percentage showing subnormal nutrition —which is not the same thing as Dr M'Millan's phrase "showing obvious effects of under-nourishment" —has surprisingly revealed a general decline over a period of seven years. In 1928 and 1929 there was, according to the statistical evidence, more malnutrition among the school children than in 1933 and 1934. Yet Dr M'Millan, who seems to claim the possession of some private " inside " information, implies that a callous Government has been content to go on educating an increasing legion of under-nourished children, and in this election year has deliberately presented the returns in such a way that their full significance will not be apparent. Dr M'Millan might have informed his audience, upon the information available in the departmental reports, that there has been an increase in the height and weight of New Zealand children during the last twenty years. He might have quoted this observation of the Director of School Hygiene: "In view of the fact that 1934 followed on two or three years of economic depression and was itself distinguished by a series of epidemic diseases, especially measles and influenza, affecting the health of the children to a wide extent, it is satisfactory to find this progress in physical development has been maintained." He might have touched on the circumstance, not infrequently alluded to by medical practitioners, that malnutrition is by no means always the result of underfeeding, but is often the result of wrong feeding, and sometimes of overfeeding. But of course the Labour Party will do away with wrong feeding and overfeeding. It has a humanitarian policy.