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26
and good fellowship, and the other eats it standing up from the dirty corner of an
overloaded table, the one person has a meal and the other person has something
less than a meal.
All the Centres where food is provided for children are visited by members of
my staff from time to time and every necessary help is given those in charge of this
great work.
UNCLEANLINESS.
Question:—The other day when I was brushing my daughter's hair,
I saw what I believe to be a louse, and was horrified. I was ashamed to
tell my husband, but I did so, and we began talking matters over and
ended up by asking how much time I had spent keeping my child's head
clean and what the Public Health Department were doing about this,
because quite frankly we felt it was wrong for the louse to be there at all,
and if there were not such a possibility of a louse being there I should be
spared a lot of time and, incidentally, my daughter would be spared much
inconvenience.
Answer:—The answer is that a lot of work is done, but as you will see from
this answer it is a very difficult problem; thus in the table on this page which sets
forth the amount of work we did last year you will note that only 460 children were
found to be unclean, and when you realise that a child with just a few nits in the
head is classified unclean you will see that the situation is not altogether bad.
The trouble is that the number of
uncleanliness findings is much higher
than the number of individual children
who have been cleansed during the
year, which means that the real
offenders are the repeated offenders.
The difficulty, of course, is a family
one. Rarely is a child repeatedly
verminous unless the mother or an
elder sister is also verminous, so that if
a child were cleansed as frequently as
twice a week, there is no reason for
supposing the child will be clean on the whole of the remaining five days.
If you will ask your hairdresser about it you will be surprised, (that is, if you
can get your hairdresser to talk confidentially) that quite a number of people who
are smartly dressed, with a chic " hair do " have not got clean heads. I see that
some of the papers which advertise permanent waving point out that the permanent
UNCLEANLINESS
Total Number of examinations
in the schools by the School
Nurses or other authorised
persons 14,280
Total Number of individual
pupils found to be infested . . 460
Number of individual pupils in
respect of whom cleansing
notices were issued (Section
54 (2), Education Act, 1944) 39