FATHER PROSECUTED

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 71, 10 April 1937, Page 4

FATHER PROSECUTED

-Presa Assooiation.)

Child at School Against Advice of Health Officer PARALYSIS CASE

(By 'Telegraph-

WELLINGTON, Last Night, Holding that a case had not been , established and that the present framing of the regulations as to infectious and notifiable diseases under the Health Act imposed too great a difficulty on those enforcing them, Mr. J. H. Luxford, S.M., to-day dismissed two informations against SamueT Lister, a plasterer, charged with permitting his child to attend eehool after having been warned by the Health authorities not to do so. The evidenee showed that the warning was the result of the boy Lister having played with a boy who had been sent to hospital with infantile paralysis. The Magistrate suggested it would be very diffieult to prove contact. He told ' the health inspectors that they were doing their duty very well by serving notices wherever there wae a possibility of infection, but the regulations did not give tfhem the power te declare contact. The Magistrate indicated that he considered there should be some such power. He added that if officers had reasonable grounds fo believe contact they should have powar to serve notices, and those noticee . should be obeyedi Coun3el for Lister said he quite unders^ood the Department's difficulty. He added, howevet, that it was only fair to his client to say that he was definite there was no contact. His boy was aged 15 and the suepect was seven and Lister was prepared to swear that there was no exposing of the boy to contact.