HEALTH OF CHILDREN.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1847, 2 July 1918, Page 3

HEALTH OF CHILDREN.

REQUIREMENTS OF MODERN

SCHOOLS

The requirements of the modern school from the point of view of a medical man were discussed hy Dr Watt, District Health Oiticer, in a lecture delivered hy him at a meeting of the Wellington branch of the New Zealand Education Institute. The subject of the lecture was “Infectious Diseases in Relation to Schools.” « Dr. Watt spoke of the necessity for guarding children against infection, especially with the object of preventing the spread of disease throughout the entire social community. His greatest point was that the school should bo such-a place as to afford the child an opportunity of becoming strong to resist disease. The school, premises should be so planned as to afford a hygienic environment for the child. The site for the building should be dry and sunny, with good drainage, and ample space for playgrounds. Trees should he planted as breakwinds where necessary, and these frees should afford facilities for the taking of some classes out of doors. There should be ample shed accommodation to protect the children from wet weather when they were ont of the class-rooms, and -there' should he asphalt footpaths to keep, the feet of the children dry in rainy weather. The buildings should consist of the requisite number of school rooms, and not simply-of a whole cut up into a number of rooms, the size and shape of which must depend on the plan of the original building. The lighting of class rooms demanded special attention. There should be sufficient window space to provide efficient lighting, and never should there be back or right hand lighting. Adequate floor space per child was essential, and an authority on,the subject bad declared that the minimum should Hot be Jess than If) square feet per child, with 150 cubic feet of air space per child, and 1,500 cubic feet of fresh air per child per hour. Very few of the schools in New Zealand approached these requirements. The walls should be so distempered that they might bo easily washed, and all rooms should be properly heated and ventilated. Above all, the building should be kept clean. Dr. Watt’s suggestion about the amount of cleaning and disinfection that were really necessary would he received with horror hy, most school janitors and the people who employ them. For instance, he would have no such alleged cleaning process as dry dusting or dry sweeping, his opinion being that the latter only served to remove the germs from the floor, where they were least of all likely to do harm, and to move them on to the desks and other parts in contact with the children. lie insisted 1 on the importance of. frequent disinfection, always preceded by most thorough cleaning. All rubbish should he collected from the grounds daily, placed in proper receptacles, and removed at least once a week.

Drinking water was a frequent source of infection. In towns (he question of water supply was not (liffient, Iml in the country, where the schools were for (ho most part dependent on rain water, it was serious. He deprecated (lie single drinking sup chained to (ho lap. The only reasonable system was the bubble drinking fountain, and in the country where that was impossible, (here should lie not one, but many, cups, and they should he sterilised once a day, preferably hy boiling.

Close care should he taken to prevent the spread of infection when epidemics were known to be in a locality. Special precautions should he taken with regard to the young children of the infant room, for the youngest children were the most liable to infection. Infected children and contacts should be excluded from the school for the proper time, and should not, under any consideration, he allowed to come into school again until after the period of infection had passed. School closure was an extreme, measure only justifiable in extraordinary circumstances. Generally the closing of schools in towns was a farce, because the children stayed away from the class-rooms only to congregate in picture halls and other places, under conditions much worse than those existing in the school. In the country it had been found that heller results had followed the closing of schools. In town schools the best results had been achieved hy the prompt exclusion of suspects. He thought that every teacher should have .sometraining in hygiene to enable him to detect symptoms of infectious disease. The diagnosis would not need to he complete or final. The matter would he reported to the medical officer, who would make a proper diagnosis.