DENTAL CLINICS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 August 1941, Page 4

DENTAL CLINICS

FREE TREATMENT FOR ' CHILDREN FURTHER AID ANNOUNCED. MINISTER OUTLINES POSITION. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Further proposals for making the dental clinic system free to the children were announced yesterday by the Minister of Health, Mr Nordmeyer. The Minister explained that the Budget reference to the abolition of the £3O per annum charge in respect of each nurse employed related to the charge which had been imposed during the depression and continued subsequently, and which had to be found by dental clinic committees. As the Minister of Finance indicated in the Budget, this amount would now be remitted and Cabinet had decided that the remission would take effect as from July 1 of this year. Mr Nordmeyer said that in addition the Government had now decided to make a further grant to dental clinic committees of an amount not exceeding £25 per annum for each school dental nurse employed. This sum was meant to cover the cost of cleaning, disinfection, lighting and heating of all rooms and offices of the school dental clinics, and laundering and rent (where payable). The Government would also accept responsibility for transport expenses incurred by school dental nurses in travelling and transferring equipment between the central clinics and those not worked on a fulltime basis. There might still be some isolated cases where expenses amounted to more than the £25 per annum now proposed to be paid by the Giovernment for each nurse, but this would represent such a small cost that it might easily be raised by the committee locally. It had been decided, therefore, that the power to make an annual charge for treating children, conferred on dental clinic committees in 1932, would be abolished.

To put the two training clinics in Wellington, in Willis Street and Tinakori Road, on the same basis as the ordinary clinics, the small charges made there in the past for treatment would also be abolished.

The Minister said it must be clearly understood that arrears were still payable, and every effort should be made by clinic committees to meet their outstanding obligations to the department up to June 30 last. The Government would not be agreeable to remitting these charges as it was felt that this would be unfair to those committees which had made strenuous efforts to meet their obligations.