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Globe, Volume VII, Issue 781, 21 December 1876, Page 2

The vital statistics for the month of November, which appear elsewhere, are such as to call for serious consideration. From these we find that Christchurch has the unenviable notoriety of being the unhealthiest city in the colony. The death rate, as will be seen, is 2.27 per 1000, which, compared with the results of the other parts of the colony, is sufficiently high to be alarming ; the next highest being Auckland, with 1.79. Looking at these statistics, no one will, we think, say that the Drainage Board has been called into existence one day too soon. To the members of this Board the present high dtfath rate should act as an incentive to push on the work, or at least the most necessary portions of it, as speedily as possible. There are one or two portions of Mr Carruthers’ scheme which can be carried out almost directly, and which would be of the greatest possible service in the check of the spread of disease. We need only refer to the notorious south drain. It is a well known fact—and has been stated publicly over and over again—that the south drain is now, and has been for some years, spreading typhoid fever around the district through which it passes. This being so we would point out to the Drainage Board that every day of hot summer weather adds to the number of victims, and helps to swell the death rate. With such facts before them and the knowledge that Christchurch is fast becoming noted throughout the colony as a most unhealthy town, it becomes the duty of the Drainage Board to push forward with vigour their works. There is existing in our midst a pestilential fever breeding drain, one which has been referred to time after time publicly as the cause of numberless cases of typhoid fever —which, as the hot weather comes on, will assuredly increase, and we find our death rate to be alarmingly high, far in advance of any other part of the colony. Surely this is sufficient to cause the Drainage Board to act with vigor and decision in carrying out a scheme for which it is claimed that it will effectually relieve us of the elements of disease with which we are now surrounded. But it is not only the south drain which is breeding disease amongst us. In the low lying parts of Christchurch—Philipstown, Waltham and some portions of Addington—low fever and other diseases caused by want of drainage are rife and go far to swell the death rate to such alarming proportions as it presents this month We earnestly commend the consideration of this matter to the members of the Drainage Board. Every week of delay adds to the danger; the fever-breeding drain still remains open diffusing its pestilential vapour. Therefore we trust that the Board will use all possible dispatch in commencing the works which are to remove from our midst this and other similar agencies for swelling the statistical returns of deaths in Christchurch,