MEDICAL. INSPECTION.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 160797, 3 November 1920, Page 4

MEDICAL. INSPECTION.

In view of recent discussion by local School Committees and parents concerning medical examination of school children, interest attaches to a clause in the Health Bill which has been considerably modified) from the form in which it was first Introduced into Parliament. As It stands now, after having passed through the Public Health Committee and the Legislative Council, the clause directs that any medical practitioner may be authorised by the Minister to examine children attending any public school, and may notify parents of any disease, or bodily defect, from which a child tnay be suffering. Secondary or technical schools have been excluded from the provision, because it was considered inadvisable that scholars over a certain age should be required to submit to examination. The earlier provision, to which exception was taken —that parents or guardians failing upon notification of a child’s physical unsoundness to seek medical, surgical or. dental (treatment, should be guilty of an offence against the Act—has also been removed- The proposal as it now stands is much the same as - the law already on the Statute Book: It confers upon children the opportunity of having physical defects brought under the notice of their parents, with the object of having them attended to, probably in time to have them remedied or removed. If effect is given to the law and the inspection provided, and parents play their part, much good may be done, for the statistics of the medical examination of recruits during the war have shown the country fvhat an alarming percentage of its manhood is physically unsound.