HOW IS IT DONE?

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20260, 21 March 1934, Page 7

HOW IS IT DONE?

Low Infant Mortality and Death Rate. DOMINION’S LEADERSHIP. “You have here th 6 lowest infant mortality and death rate in the world and I have come to see how vou do it, ’ said Dr V. G. Heiser, of New York. Eastern Director of the Rockefeller Foundation, in an interview to-day. Dr Heiser arrived from the north this morning and left for the south by the 12.25 p.m. express after four crowded hours in Christchurch. Dr Heiser said that the Rockefeller Foundation was very interested in New Zealand’s excellent health conditions and wished to study the methods that had brought about such desirable results with a view to applying them in other parts of the world. “ I met your Prime Minister yesterday and congratulated him on New Zealand having more good water and consequently a better sewage system than any other country in the world,” added Dr Heiser. “ That is, of course, a big factor in the health of the people.” Another factor was the care taken in the health of children. New Zealand had an unusually high standard in this direction and it was marvellous what was being done. The open-air schools system, for instance, was of great J value, and such addresses as that given i by Sir Louis Barnett last night helped to educate the community. Dr Heiser spent a busy morning in Christchurch with the Medical Officer of Health, Dr T. Fletcher Telford. He visited the Plunket rooms, the Karitane Baby Hospital and the Public Hospital. lie spent some time with Dr A. B. Pearson, the bacteriologist, and expressed approval of the work being done by him, adding that it was a splendid thing to have the public laboratories and the hospital laboratories under the one roof. Visit to Islands. When the visitor left for Dunedin, he said his only regret was that he had not had more time in Christchurch. In Dunedin, he expects to find more material for his report on New Zealand conditions by a visit to the medical and hygiene schools of Otago University. He will then return to Auckland to leave by the Mariposa for Suva and the Islands. The Foundation is cooperating with the New Zealand Government in an endeavour to eradicate certain diseases, particularly hookworm and yaws, in the Islands. An attempt will also be made to control soil pollution diseases. In this connection, Dr Heiser met in Wellington yesterday Sir Apirana Ngata, Minister for the Cook Islands. “ It is very gratifying to see how the Islanders, under the influence of the better educational facilities given them since New Zealand took control, have become amenable to the measures necessary for soil sanitation,” Dr Heiser said. Dr Heiser added that, as president of the International Leprosy Association, he was pleased to say that the disease of leprosy need no longer be considered hopeless. Much had been done in research and the disease was coming under control. These discoveries were international—one country making the initial discovery, another adding a further step and so on—and this was a big factor in international co-operation and friendship. This is Dr Heiser’s sixteenth trip round the world. He is constantly travelling and visits from thirty to forty countries in a year.