HEALTH OF CHILDREN.

Taranaki Daily News, 15 October 1921, Page 4

HEALTH OF CHILDREN.

CONDITIONS AT FITZROY SCHOOL PREVALENCE OF EPIDEMICS. “SCHOOLS NOT THE CAUSE.” (Special to Daily News.) Hawera, Last Night. “The alleged overcrowding in the Fitzroy School is not so serious as in many other schools in New Zealand.” This statement was made to a Daily News reporter to-night by the Hon. C. J. Farr (Minister of Education), when his attention was drawn to the remarks made at the Education Board’s meeting on Wednesday concerning the school. Continuing, Mr. Parr said: “When the Education Board spends the grant that has been made by the department to convert the gymnasium into a temporary schoolroom, the conditions will be more favorable tlian in hundreds of other schools. It is not the schools which have caused the epidemic; there are other causes. The infectious diseases are coming largely from country districts, where there is ample school accommodation. “You must seek elsewhere for the causes of these epidemics, which have been very severe throughout New Zealand for the past year. Health authorities say that throughout the world, since the war, for some reason or other, the power of resistance of the human being seems to have lessened, and at the same time germs and organisms have become much more virulent. These epidemics are of world-wide range. The whole world has been exhausted by the war, and the human being is not exempt in the aftermath of physical and jnervous trouble.”