DIPHTHERIA EPIDEMIC.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2466, 12 August 1922, Page 2

DIPHTHERIA EPIDEMIC.

A DOCTOR’S WARNING.

“A severe type of diphtheria is prevalent now; and the public is not alive to the danger of delay in obtaining advice, especially when the disease attacks the windpipe,” said the Medical Superintendent of the Palmerston North Hospital (Dr. Forrest) in the course of his report to a meeting of the Board on Thursday. “A few hours delay may be fatal. In the last five months there have been six deaths as compared with one for the whole of last yeai\ Six cases were treated during the month.”

In reference to this, the chairman (Sir James Wilson) said he hoped the doctor’s words would be widely noted and he would like to give a word of advice to parents to seek medical advice if any soreness manifested itself in a child’s throat.

Turning to the doctor, Sir James asked how it was that long ago scarlet fever and diphtheria were little known. There was no isolation then, but now when the patients were isolated for six weeks, in the case of scarlet fever, and until the doctor considered the patient cured, in the ease of diphtheria, there was an infinitely greater percentage of both complaints than there was, say 29 years ago. The complaints occasioned very serious losses to “the hospital boards, the parents of the children eoneeimed, and the children themselves iu absence from school.

“I do not think we have any control over epidemics of this nature,” replied Dr. Forrest. “There has been for the last three years an increased amount of scarlet fever and diphtheria.” All those who were susceptible took these complaints, and they died out only for a period ind reappeared when a new generation of children susceptible to them grew up. There was no way of coni rolling these epidemics. In all the European countries the same eondilions obtained. The Health authorises were trying to do away with diphtheria by destroying the carriers. In this connection, the hospital bacteriologist visited Feilding during the week, and swabbed the throats of ‘Job children.