SIR – During the war when the butter ration was only 2ozs per week most people had to eat margarine which was supplemented by law with vitamin D which acted as a preventative to rickets.

It seemed to work well, for the people seen with bent legs were mainly women in the 50+ age group.

We must accept that now in Bradford the prevailing economic conditions, ethnic diets and resistance to sunlight have caused a re- insurgence of this preventable condition.

It is suggested that a broad brush of vitamin D and calcium preventatives through the schools would cost far less than a lifetime of care for those needlessly afflicted.

I remember that in the late 1930s, children up to the age of seven at Usher St School we were regularly individually inspected by the School doctor, dentist, optician and nit nurse, but now current legislation would class such inspections as assault. We are supposed to have progressed!

John Pashley, Westcliffe Avenue, Baildon