THE INFLUENZA OUTBREAK.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 7, Issue 424, 8 November 1918, Page 2

THE INFLUENZA OUTBREAK.

Although slow to act, and at first utterly failing to recognise the seriousness of the outbreak of the influenza scourge in Auckland, the Health Department is now taking all possible steps to check the ravages of the disease. Rightly or .wrongly, the suspicion cannot be allayed that to last visit of the s.s. Niagara, on board of which influenza was rite iv a most acute form, the introduction into or spread of the disease in the. Dominion is due. Public opinion at the time was—and has, by subsequent happenings since, been accentuated that the ship and its passengers should have been quarantined. Whatever the considerations were that were responsible for the failure of the authorities to Institute that st«p, the result has certainly been that Auckland was contaminated after the dlsem-

Darkgtion of passengers from the boat, the disease, in due course, being communicated to the country districts and also further afield. That it has sucbra hold on the Auckland district, and is in a much lesser degree prevalent in other parts of the Dominion, would seem, despite official denials, to point to the cause of origin being as stated. At all the hotels in Auckland at which those who disembarked from the Niagara stayed the disease has been markedly rampant, whilst, in various other ways, the infection I was also spread. Very few households have escaped in the city, and the long lists ot obituary notices appearing in the daily papers tells its tale of the havoc that has been wrought. The country districts, too, are seriously affected. But, as already mentioned, everything possible now is in operation to counteract the scourge, which yesterday was gazetted " A dangerous infectious disease.'' As reported in another column, thanks to the .action of Mr A. G. C. Glass, who In an interview, on Wednesday, with the Minister of Public Health, pointed out the difficulties of of administering to sufferers in places in which medical aid was not obtainable, and where no chemists' shops existed, the Health Department has arranged to forword free supplies of the specially-prepared standard medicine and of disinfectants to any responsible local organisation making application for the same. Mr Glass promptly secured a first instalment of the preparations for the Mercer district, and the Town Board and River Board offices, at Mercer, are being used as a centre for the distribution of the medicine and disinfectants to applicants from that part of the Lower Waikato.