SPREAD OF GOITRE.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 June 1925, Page 8

SPREAD OF GOITRE.

PREVALENCE IN DOMINION MANY CHILDREN AFFECTED. lODINE AS A REMEDY. By Telegraph.—Pres* Association. Wellington, June 20. The Health Department htia received a valuable report on the evidence of goitre, in New Zealand from Professor Benson, professor of geology, and Air. C. L. Carter, lecturer on chemistry. The report states that, as indicating the prevalence of goitre in New Zealand, it may be mentioned that, the routine school medical inspection for 1924 shows that out of a total of 55,000 children examined goitre (of varying degree) existed in 18.33 per cent., made up as follows: Incipient 12.53 per cent., small 5 per cent., medium 7 per cent., large 11 per cent. In 1920 an endeavour wss made to establish accurately the extent to which thyroid enlargement prevailed amongst the school children of Canterbury and West land. The majority of the children examined were in the age group of five to fourteen years. The results were summarised as 'follow: 13.16 per cent, of the children were examined; 39 per cent, were found to have normal and 61 per cent, enlarged thyroids. The report says that, assuming that the fundamental factor in the causation of goitre is a deficient intake of iodine, the prevention of the disease should be a comparatively simple problem. *’We believe that the best method of prophylasis. considered on physiological grounds as well as those of efficiency and economy, would be derived from a daily ingestion of minute amounts of iodine by the utilisation for all culinary and table purposes of an iodinised .salt in which one part of pataasium iodide had been added to 160,000 of sodium chloride.”