SECOND DIVISION

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 98, 18 January 1918, Page 6

SECOND DIVISION

_♦ . MEDICAL APPEAL BOARD WANTED. A deputation of members of the Christcliurch branch of the Second Division League waited on the Prime .Minister on Tuesday in connection with the medical examination of reservists. Mr. M. J. Gresson was the only speaker. He said that whilst the Second Division men were all ready to do their duty they asked for a guarantee that any man sent to :amp should be medically fit. X strict medical examination was necessary, as it was a great hardship for a recruit to dispose of his business, perhaps, and then, when he pot to camp, to be turned down as unfit. The deputation was prepared to support the setting up of a ltoyal Commission to inquire into the medical examination system, but the work ot such a ltoyal Commission would take considerable time and the results might not be known for months. He would oifer.as a suggestion that in every recruiting centre a Medical Appeal Board should be set up. to consist of two independent competent and impartial medical men. These gentlemen should be on the premises when a recruit was immediately examined, and if any u> servist was passed as lit by the medical board doctors he could if lie were dissatisfied appeal to the members of the Appeal Board, who would ro-exajiiiue him, and that tribunal would have i.ho. final decision.

Continuing, Mr. Gresson outlined iho present procedure, and said that ho could quote two cases of hardship. The first was that of a reservist who was passed fit in May and remained in camp until December. Only twejve hours before he was due to sail with bis draft he was medically examined and rejected because of weak e.vesiij;!.. Thus he had been seven months unnecessarily in camp at considerable cost to the country and great loss to himself. In the other instance the recniit got as far as Sling Camp, and \>;>s then rejected for weak eyesight. It was necessary lor the authorities to realise that to the reservists the date of their going into camp was the must important particular, not when Lhuy left for the front. It would cause considerable dissatisfaction if reservists broke up their homes and were later rejected at camp. The proposed independent Appeal Board would be a .safeguard to the reservists, as far as was humanly possible, and he hoped the Prime Minister would bring the representations < f the deputation before tho Minister of Defence and support cue suggestions made. The Prime Minister said that ho would say at once that 110 would bo very glad to lay the request of the deputation before Cabinet. It was tho desire of tho Government that every possible care should be taken to avoid hardship tu reservists, and such care had been and would be taken.