"GET-FIT" MINISTER

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 299, 2 December 1936, Page 3

"GET-FIT" MINISTER

Drive to Make British Nation ?< Al n IMPROVING HEALTH . (Own Correspondent—By )Air Mail.) LONDON, Oct. 14. A Minister of Physical Fitness may be the result of the Government’s drive for a higher general standard of health in this country. Education authorities, health authorities and parents themselves arc to be enlisted in the task of giving youth greater opportunities to improve their physical condition. 4 ‘The time has come when we must all make a vigorous forward drive to improve the physique of the nation,” declared Sir Kingsley Wood, Minister of Health, in an exclusive interview with the “Sunday Chronicle” yesterday. “The death rate in such diseases as tuberculosis, measles and diphtheria has been astonishingly reduced in recent years. “Now greater attention is to be given to toning up the general standard of health. Being free from pain and sickness is not enough. The aim is for a 100 per cent, fit nation. “The Ministery of Health is doing all -that is possible to encourage the provision of open spaces, recreation grounds, playing fields, swimming baths, and other facilities for recreation. Support for Mr Neville Chamberlain’s call for better recreational facilities to make the nation Al was made by Lord Burghley in opening Northampton’s new municipal indoor swimming baths, yesterday. He had gained a high impression, ’as «aid, of our swimming facilities, but h' did not think we had gono as fat ahead as other countries. Northampton, he added, was giving its contribution as far as swimming was concerned in. providing a magnificent bath.