INFANTILE PARALYSIS

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2719, 14 March 1916, Page 4

INFANTILE PARALYSIS

The daily reports from the District Health Office show that although the number oi cases of infantile paralysis over the whole.of the Wellington health area—which extends right up the E&sfc and West Coast districts as far as Gisborne on the one side, and New Plymouth on the other—is still comparatively small, there is a persistent appearance of new cases. This seems .to suggest that the contacts/ must have been fairly numerous, and the infection widely spread. There is no need for public but a serious responsibility is laid on all concerned for strict and unremitting attention to precautionary measures. We are assured by medical opinion that a return of cooler weather will arrest the epidemic, and destroy the virulence of the bacillus, but in spite of tentative hints from the Meteorological Department, which has been . publishing "indications" with vain persistence, the weather remains fine, though the sky yesterday gave somo ( promise of coolcr days. It is a com-mon-place that in great crises our sins of omission find us out, and in nothing has this been more abundantly and tragically demonstrated ! than |in the terrible death-struggle v/hicli is blasting the face of Europe to-day. It is W far cry from an epidemic of infantile paralysis in a remote corner of the Empire to the arena of a world war, but the principle of preparedness remains the same; The fact was published the other day that the Mount Cook Schools, as a precautionary measure, were being fumigated. One naturally is prompted to ask why this was not clone before. These buildings are very old; their date of relegation to the wood-heap is long overdue, yet those responsible for their sanitary condition would seem to have allowed the wholcof the long summer recess to.pass, the schools to reopen, and a dangerous epidemic to menace tho juvenile population of the city, before it occurred to them to undertake the simple, inexpensive and highly necessary operation of fumigating the buildings, an operation which, we should have imagined, was a periodical duty enforced by regulations. It is to be hoped that this is an isolated instance. We

arc glad to see that the city authorities are alive to the possibilities of the situation, and are extending every facility to the public to avail itself of simple measures of precaution. With our greatly improved communications by rail, road, and

sea all over the country an epidemic of any kind—and particularly one of this baffling type—tends to become very elusive, and an alert sense of individual responsibility on th< •part of the public is perhaps the best assistance that can to given the Health Department at the present time.