PREVENTION IS BETTER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26636, 5 December 1947, Page 4

PREVENTION IS BETTER

The continued failure of the Department of Health to take measures to prevent the possibility of the spreading of the infantile paralysis epidemic to the South Island is inexplicable. Whereas in the North Island action has been prompt, and extends beyond the areas in which cases have been reported, in the South Island the school year draws to a close without any precautions being taken. Not only is it possible for children as well, as adults from the areas of infection to travel to and throughout the'South Island, but children are being enabled, and indeed encouraged, to crowd together. In our news columns this morning we print statements given in reply to questions which the Daily Times addressed to two Dunedin medical practitioners. Both these doctors state quite definitely that it is not desirable that the children of Otago—as of other South Island districts—should be permitted to congregate. Specifically, they declare that children should not be allowed to foregather in confined, closed spaces. This opinion may be taken as * representative of that of the medical profession. Yet in the coming week the children of Otago are free not only to mingle in school and playground, but to assemble in unusually large numbers at l prize-givings and school entertainments, to attend theatres and to roam in the streets and shops. To allow this form of liberty is little less than lunacy. The unpredictability of the oncoming of infantile paralysis makes the apathy of the Health Department not less but more strange. It is devoutly to be hoped that the faith of the authorities will be justified, and the disease confined to the present areas of infection. But a policy of masterly inactivity towards the taking of thorough, measures that might contribute to checking it is inexcusable. There would be little lost to the children if the schools in the South Island were closed immediately—that is, to-day; if inter-island travel was restricted at once; if reasonable prohibitions on gatherings of children in enclosed spaces were put into effect immediately. And these might possibly be the very measures by which young lives would be saved from blighting, and many homes spared an agony of distress and suffering.