SPREAD OF GOITRE.

Taihape Daily Times, 29 August 1919, Page 4

SPREAD OF GOITRE.

! SERIOUS STATE OP AFFAIRS AMONG CHILDREN. WANGANUI, Aug. 27. The serious spread of goitre among children was impressed on the Wanganui Education Board to-night by Dr Elizabeth Gunn, medical inspector of [schools. "I have examined fifty-four girls aged from 11 to 14," said Dr 1 Gunn. "Thirty-one of those girls have goitre and 23 are without it. Out of those 54 girls 26 have physical deformities. The girls are tired and lackadaisical and mothers complain that it if, the result of home lessons." Dr Gunn then outlined a course of treatment which she is proposing to the Education Department, and she would like to take, say, fifty girls aged eleven to fourteen and medically examine them, measure their necks, etc., with special attention to size and shape of goitres and then have them given some iodine every day. This should be given once a day for five days at school for six months. She would also have 50 girls of the same age and class who would get no medicine. A comparison at the end of the period would, she was sure, show the value of iodine.