INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC

Taihape Daily Times, 14 November 1918, Page 4

INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC

This town has suffered no more than the generality of such communities have from the prevailing epidemic. Taihape has a huuge back country fer which it has to provide hospital room, and it is in this connection the blunder of being tied to a hospital board having its headquarters a hundred miles away is seriously emphasised. An appeal to Wanganui is made for permission to provide temporary accommodation,and permision is given so long as it costs nothing or next to nothing. The eld Latins used to say, “Res est sacre miser,” —a suffering person is sacred. Are humane teachings to-day any improvement upon what they were centuries ago? Influenza patients continue to come in, and tToctors are appealing for hospital room so Li;

patients in the suburbs and surrounding villages may be brought where they may have the attention thai is necessary to preserve life. The Mayor is endeavouring to open the Presbyterian Hall as a hospital; beds are offering, and many ladies have volunteered as nurses and others to do washing and cooking, and there seems no valid reason why all other little difficulties should not be overcome and the temporary hospital with its voluntary nurses and helpers established. It is silly to think life can be preserved through an epidemic of the kind without some expense; what, we ask the hospital authorities is, have a thousand pounds any comparison with even one life? What is the filthy luchre in comparison to the suffering person the ancients looked as sacred? Does

the Hospital Board take the stand that' money is before life? Something must be done; Taihape is appealed to from all directions for hospital accommodation, ancTit is the obvious duty of the Hospital Board to provide it. A hospital board’s duty does not end when it has erected palatial buildings in Wanganui. The sick and suffering in ITHs district, extending fifty miles north, and nearly as far eastward, of Taihape, have as much claim upon the Hospital Board as the suufrerers in Wanganui have; do the hoard realise this? If they do, they should do what is right or at once end the unholy alliance between this district and Wanganui The pressing point is that hospital accommodation is needed, and the people of Taihape should provide it despite any stand the Hospital Board may take. It is understood that members of the- Otaihape Club have appealed to the Health Department for means to institute an inhalation chamber, and they are, if necessary, prepared to find the required money. It is also reported that a visitor, on a professional visit to the town, "has offered to provide and equip an inhalation chamber at his own. cost, where settlers and ethers may pass through and avoid carrying infection to their homes in the country. It is hoped such a Chamber will be available so that men ancT’women employed in business may render themselves innocuous in coming to business and in leaving it for their homes. The twenty four hours’ immunity they get may have proved the very period in which the disease would have been contracted, Let all who can do something.