DR WATT’S TOUR

Hokitika Guardian, 12 May 1926, Page 3

DR WATT’S TOUR

HEALTH OFFICER RETURNS WELLINGTON, May 10. Dr M. H. Watt, Deputy DirectorGeneral of Health, accompanied by Airs Watt, was a passenger by the Makura which arrived from San Francisco to-day.

The primary obect of Dr Watt’s tour

was to represent New Zealand at a conference in Japan ol one of the medical sections of the League of Nations. The conference, which was attended by officers of health of the principal countries bordering the Pacific, met first at Tokio, and papers were read and discussions took place on various diseases, more especially

those', prevaliofnt An the East. The visitors were most hospitably entertained by the Japanese authorities, and after a brief tour of Japan. China and Manchuria, returned to Tokio, where they resumed the conference. At the conclusion of these delibera-

tions, Dr Watt toured the United States and Canada, and enquired in-

to matters of health administration in both countries. He visited the principal hospitals in America, and also those in Toronto. He was most cordially received everywhere, and was given every opportunity of studying the method adopted by the health organiations, and in famous hospitals in

loth countries. Dr Watt, is prepnrng a report of his enquiries into icalth and hospital matters in the ■minlnes lie visited. At I lie time the Makura left San

i’l'anc'isco, said Dr Watt, there was a noderate amount of mild smallpox in

the vicnitv of San Francisco, more particularly in Oakland. This, however, was by no means unusual, as mild smallpox was endemic on the Pacific Coast. Los Angeles, however, had experienced a more severe visitation of the disease. The latest reports from the San Francisco Slate Board of Health were that the hack

if the epidemic was broken. For the irst three weeks of April there had icon some 70 cases, with about do leaths. This severe type of smallpox c'as confined to the vicinity of Los

Angeles. “It is, of course,, advisable,’’ added Dr "Watt, “that at any time passengers should he vaccinated, and this applies with all the more reason at present.”