INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 January 1919, Page 5

INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC.

40,000 DEATHS IN EGYPT. Received Jan, 5, 5.5 p.m. Cairo, Jan. 3Influenza deaths total forty thousand —Aus.-N.Z, Cable Assoc- i IN THE ISLANDS. Referring to the influenza epidemic at Fiji, a correspondent of the New Zoaland Herald, writing under date December 0, says:—"The principal difficulty in combatting the disease in a community such as ours' is the ignorance of the natives. The Indiana aro inclined to take notice of advice, but the Fijians and other natives are lower in the mental scale, and it is no uncommmon thing for them to take the medicine offered, keep it in tlieir mouths until the back of the helper is turned, and then spit it out. The heat of the fever is too much for them, and they obey first instincts to get cool. It was a frequent sight to see a native with nothing on but tils'narrow sulu or loin-cloth, sitting on a mat out in the open air with torrents of rain falling on him, or' to find men Und women with not a stitch on lying across open doorways, shoulders heaving with the coughs that were racking them- Some sights were gruesome that greeted the voluntary workers. Neither the Fijian nor the Indian has a grandiose idea of a house, and in these homes would be half a dozen natives in various stages of the disease, with a corpae in the midst of them—a corpse that had already been theT# a djv. This was in the early days of the outbreak. Thanks, however, to the energy and enthusiasm with which the work was undertaken, it is safe to pay that within tbe town itself and the villages near by there is not a single instance of a Fijian dying through neglect lack of B#ur wtoest,*