PLUNKET WORK.

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20258, 29 July 1937, Page 13

PLUNKET WORK.

ADVANTAGES LOST. NEED FOR EXTENSION. (Special to Times.) HASTINGS, Wednesday. Dr. Martin Tweed, medical adviser to the New Zealand Pluket Society, speaking at a conference here, pointed out that the advantages of the early efforts of the Plunket Society were largely lost by mothers who did not continue tho work in their homes. He urged that attention should be given to young people until they reach 19 or 20 years. During the years of that gap future mothers and fathers lost their digestion, their nerves, their health and their teeth, and then the society had to pick up the broken threads and start all over again. “ There is a terrible gap in the work, roughly between the ages of three or four year-s and 19 or 20 years, and it is on this gap that we must concentrate. Travellers from abroad will tell you of the enormous popularity of the 4 keep fit ' movements at Home and ion the Continent,” said Dr. Tweed. “ In this it seems we are rather lagging behind in New Zealand. Our babies may be the best looked after in the world, but after all our care why do we have to have milk rations in our schools? Why do we have health camps for our under-nourished school children? Why are the hospitals and mental hospitals so full? “ We have a healthy climate and we are surrounded by unlimited quantities of milk, bujter, eggs, cheese, fish, fruit and vegetables. Tt is the price we have to pay for these health-giving foods that turns housewives’ thoughts to the cheaper diet of meat, tea and •sugar and white flour. 44 1 can see no hope for the future unless health and education go step by step together, when our homes, our kindergartens, schools and institutes the health of the people by education In health habits.”