INFANTILE PARALYSIS.

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 338, 20 January 1937, Page 3

INFANTILE PARALYSIS.

EPIDEMIC CONTROL. Address By Doctor At Annual Conference. Press Association—Copyright. Auckland, Last Night. I Any attempt to control an epidemic | of infantile paralysis in New Zealand iby methods of quarantine is fore- | doomed to failure, according to a ! statement made by Professor Kerens, . professor of bacteriology and public health at Otago University in the fifth George Adlington Syme oration, which he delivered at the opening of the annual meeting of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in the Town Hall to-night. Professor Kerens said there were many serious misconceptions in the public mind about this infection, and he pointed out that if the disease were stamped out altogether in a country within a few years a susceptible population would arise, with the result that there would be a much more serious epidemic than there had been in the past. “Since infantile paralysis was declared a notifiable infectious disease in 1914 there have been some 3200 cases notified, and some 80 per cent, of these cases have been in children under 10 years of age,’’ said Professor Kerens. “Not a month passes but some cases are detected throughout the country. Since 1914* therefore, the organism has at all times been widely distributed in New Zealand. Six times during this period the disease has become an epidemic. It is remarkable how seldom a district once visited by an epidemic has experienced a recurrence, it is equally curious how seldom cases have occurred in orphanages or hospitals, how seldom children of school age are attacked compared with children of pre-school age, and how in frequently infection can be traced to a recognised case. The reasons for these occasional outbreaks of this epidemic disease are not completely understood, but they differ in no way from those which operated in measles, whooping cough, diphtheria and tuberculosis.’’