WOULD NEED EXHAUSTIVE INVESTIGATION

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 902, 20 February 1930, Page 7

WOULD NEED EXHAUSTIVE INVESTIGATION

HEALTH OFFICER’S OPINION ! "Even if the malarial mosquito were I found at Takapuna there would be ! nothing - in that to create a panic,’’ j said one authority to which Mr. j Wilkie’s discovery was referred this | morning. Dr. T. J. Hughes, Medical officer of Health.- says the information need not i cause any alarm. Outside Melbourne | there are numbers of malarial ! mosquitoes but they never do any harm. Still another authority pointed out that it would need a most exhaustive investigation by a scientist to decide whether the mosquito actually carried the malarial germ. Now that Mr. David Grahame has left Auckland there is no one competent to tell whether the mosquito is a malarial germ-carrier. It was explained that all malarial mosquitoes do not carry the germ which breeds the disease and that even if they do they must bite a human ! carrier to do any harm. There are only certain people who are ’carriers, i and only certain mosquitoes which are I carriers. | Dr. Hughes thinks that if the j malarial mosquito had been in AuckI land it would have been discovered iby Mr. Grahame. who did most j exhaustive research work for many | years, or by Dr. Miller, now of the ] Cawthron Institute, who worked for , many years before Mr. Grahame. In the old days there was pro’n- ! ably a greater risk of the malarial mosquito coming from Australia than j at the present time, because there was j more stagnant, water in the old ships ! and casks and such cargo was handled ! differently. The doctor is of the j opinion that if the mosquito were here | in any numbers it would have been j found long ago. It was the general opinion that spraying the areas where mosquitoes breed would be an excellent thing, whether the malarial variety were there or not.