INFLUENZA WORSE THAN ANY PLAGUE

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 192, 9 May 1919, Page 3

INFLUENZA WORSE THAN ANY PLAGUE

6,000,000 DEATHS IN INDIA.

("Times" Correspondent.)

Delhi, March 1 (delaye'd). The Government has issued a remarkable report on tho iniluenza epidemic By Major Norman White, who has just vacated the position of Sanitary .ComifflsHioner, which he had filled with dis&icuon. Major White declares that from tho incomplete information available it ■would appear that no country has suffered as severely from the disease as India during tho'last, quarter of 1918. Without fear of exaggeration it can be btated that influenza was responsible for six million deaths, equivalent to more than half the mortality attributable to plague in the 22 years during which plaguo has been epidemic in this country. Pivo million deaths occurred in British India, and one million in the Native States. He affirms that thero is no evidence that tho diseaso originated in malnutrition. Its incidence was very high among the well-fed British troops, higher indeed than among tho Indifln troops. It cannot be denied, ho says, that malnutrition was occasionally a factor of importance in determining a fatal i6sue. Iho report proceeds:— Although the belief prevails that- iniluenza. ivas introduced by ships arriving at Bombay and Karachi, it is by no means certain that the infection was not already pre-oxistent in India, fatal cases of influenza having occurred in the Bombay gaols in 1917. Major Whito declares that while he would be the last to <lony that* tho Indian health organisation is in urgent 'need of expansion and reform, it must bo acknowledged that if India had possessed health and medical organisations as efficient as those of most progressive countries it would have been impossible to effect much in checking tho ravages of tho disease. Doctors possess 110 special immunity, and owing to their contact with the infection a large percontago were incapacitated when their oervices wero most needed. Tho report gives an interesting account of tho scientific work carried' out in India in regard to tho bacteriology of tho epi'rteihio and tho preparation of vaccine. .At a meeting of bacteriologies at Delhi the constitution of a vaccine suitable for ■use' as a, prophylactic was decided upon, and it is being prepared at Bombay and Kasauli laboratories. It consists of influenza bacilli, nnd 500,000,000 pneuruococci, 100,000,000 for tho first dose. Tho second dose to be-double the first. Three' hundred thousand doses ate being kept in reserve in case of a- recrudescence of tho epidemic. Major White, however, points out the difficulty of dealing with a hugo population liko that of India in the event of an outbreak of such virulence as the last. It seems improbable, ho jsays, if inoculation would confer greater immunity than an attack of tho disease, and it can be stated without-ex-aggeration that from.so to £0 por cent, of the total population havs iscently eviffered from influenza. ' ;;