TO GUARD 700,000 CHILDREN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 161, 6 January 1912, Page 10 (Supplement)

TO GUARD 700,000 CHILDREN.

£IOO,OOO ON DOCTORS AND NURSES. New York City has decided to expend £IOO,OOO during the coming year for medical inspection of the pupils attending the municipal board schools. There are about 700,000 scholars whose health the city will guard, and 30 per cent, of these, it is estimated, will require medical attention. Last year £75,000 was appropriated for the hygienic department of the board schools, but it has been found necessary to make a larger grant. The additional sum will be used largely for the care of the pupils' teeth. Twenty-four municipal dentists will give free service to those children whose teeth have been neglected by their par--1 ents. Seventy-two medical inspectors will subject every child in the schools to examination, at stated intervals, and a force of 196 nurses will bo employed to visit the homes of sick pupils and see that they are receiving proper attention. Nasal complaints are the most frequent discoveries of the school hygienic corps, thousands of children being afflicted with adenoids, which American medical science now insists is the principal cause of backwardness in pupils. The municipal doctors remove the adenoid growths whenever they are discovered. Possibility of children with contagious diseases being sent to school is also guarded against, and every teacher is being instructed in disease symptoms, so that detection can be made as quickly as possible.