HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Opunake Times, 25 July 1947, Page 2

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

ACCIDENTAL BURNS (By the Department of Health) Death and injury from burns and scalds is a type of home accident that not decreasing. It continues—clothes catch fire' from flames of open fire, or stove front, or from contact with an electric heater, the pulling of pots and pans and kettles from stoves or benches over on to little bodies, with resultant large areas scalded. The country cannot afford this wastage of little lives. Our papers don’t report every case of burns in the home. They hear of the major tragedies only. Hundreds of cases slip through our hospital wards unjioard of. A prominent member of the nursing profession, after a tour round a group of our public hospitals,' reported that there were too many toddlers and children in onr wards recovering from burns and scalds received in the home —some of them severe burns. Some time later a plastic surgeon of great skill urged that parents and others should do all they could to avoid letting children get burnt or scalded at home. He was spending too much time altogether patching up this type of damage, and he frequently had return cases of burns in the same little patient, or of other children from the same Home. If you have little ones in the. home give some thought to this matter of preventing burns and scalds. Don’t let children play with stoves or fires. Screen and guard all fires, open or electric. Be careful with fires in the backyard—watch children at the time and don’t leave ashes and embers for hare feet to stumble into. Pans or kettles on the top of the stove should have their handles turned in so that a child cannot grasp them. Electric flexes should be out of reach. Dry cleaning should be done outside m the open air and preferably with a non-inflammable liquid.