INFLUENZA SCOURGE

Hokitika Guardian, 9 February 1921, Page 3

INFLUENZA SCOURGE

HEAI.TH EXPERTS OTTIMISTIC

WELLINGTON, February 5

Holding that this Dominion was well ‘‘innoculated’' by the influenza epidemic of 1918, the experts ofCHic New Zealand Health Department, on being inti,viewed yesterday in regard to the report of the British Health Ministry on influenza, took a more optimistic view of the situation than that cabled from England. The pessimism expressed by the Ministry of Health, it was pointed out, is based on the ground that, in spite of tlu* experience of the last few years, we have not advanced in knowledge of the nature of, and therefore the methods of dealing with, diseases Of the influenza type. The Health Department was not inclined to view gloomily Mu* outlook in Ny*w Zealand, firstly, because the country underwent- ;< process of innoculation during 1918 the effect of which must last lor some considerable time, because the spread of the infection then was so great that it. cannot but leave its influence behind. In this respect we are possibly more* fortunate than countries which have a more crowded population, because the very cause which led to the spread of the outbreak —the previous immunity of large parts of the population—has now led to the population acquiring some degree of immunity. That is to say that the people is sparsely-settled districts who had previously avoided contracting influenza were especially a! dieted hv it in 1918. because the germ came, so to speak, to new ground; toil tijow those people, having been affected by the epidemic, will not present the same source of danger. Another matter which makes for optimism is that we no longer have those abnormal conditions of population which were prevalent in 1918. There is little doubt that the massing of troops, more especially of troops from country districts which find not undergone, the normal process of immunising which persons who live in crowded conditions must undergo, must have been responsible very largely or the abnormal increase of virulence which was experienced in tin* epidemic of 1918. The movement of large I todies of men from one poujitry to another, especially tinder the crowded conditions necessarily existing on troopships, must also be regarded as a source of danger. Then again, the reduction of resistance which large bodies of flu* population had to undergo in wartime must he considered. Except for portions if Southern and Central Europe, the conditions of privation 'which produced this reduction of resistance do not now obtain. Certainly they do pot prevail in New Zealand. None of tlu* other conditions specified is now in existence to any extent, and therefore there is not now the opportunity for the organism of flu* disease to exist in the surroundings which would enable it to increase to abnormal virulence.