A PANAMA CANAL DANGER.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1349, 29 January 1912, Page 4

A PANAMA CANAL DANGER.

BRINGING THE FEVER BELT NEARER. (By Teleftraph.-Snorial Correspondents Auckland, January 28. TliD Sydney correspondent of the "Herald" says when the Panama Canal is opened and the Pacific becomes the great commercial highway, with Auckland as one of Hie principal ports of call, a dangerously rici>e connection will be established between New Zealand and one of the. groat fever belts of the world, ami a grave responsibility will be thrown upon Hie Health authorities to prevent the introduction o! yellow fever, the ravages of which have been amongst the Greatest difficulties that have eonfrautcd those engaged in the completion of the canal. A Sydney paper, in referring to this menace, points out that its reality ■heroines apparent when it.is remembered how from various ports in the Spanish Main, themselves usually infected by vessels from harbours where the disease was rife, yellow fever was carried to Spain and to Portugal. There its incidence showed all the virulence of a new diseuf-e in new. surroundings. From 1800 onwards liaivelona, Seville, and Cadiz all suffered severely. Lisbon in J SS7 recorded over 6000 deaths from the disease. Ports nearer the regions where (he fever is endemic have suffered very severely at times, Neiv Orleans for example. Rio de Janeiro lias had some notoriously severe epidemics, and in ISPS 91 per wut. of those attacked by the di&nase died. It is, however, tho paper continues, a comfort to think that infection is less likely to bo carried by the modern steamer than by Lhe vessel of half a century ago, but tho danger is a real one nevertheless.