HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 January 1943, Page 5

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

BEATING THE FLY MENACE. ELIMINATION OF BREEDING GROUNDS. (By the Health Department). Flies are now starting to come out from wherever they go in the winter time, and are making themselves as big a problem as ever. As the weather gets warmer, so will the hordes of flies get bigger and bolder, and be a constant menace to our health. People seem to accept the fly as one i of summer’s inevitable afflictions. They are fully aware of its potential danger, but the tolerance which is shown towards it is extraordinary in this intelligent age. The fly is one of the foulest of creatures—an insect loaded with germs which are scattered indiscriminately on our food and on our persons. These germs breed inside the insect. They cluster thickly on its legs, and there’s a terrifying as-1 sortment of them.

. Every time the fly rests on fermenting or putefying matter it gathers more foulness, and every time it alights on something or someone it releases them —germs of typhoid fever, dysentery, summer sickness, tuberculosis, and even skin infections. To defeat the fly the breeding grounds must be eliminated. Keep house refuse, stable manure, decaying fruit and vegetables, and other matter well covered. Inside the house see that all food is properly screened. The use of fly traps, fly papers and com mercial sprays inside will help to keep the number down.

An ounce of formalin added to a pint of milk or water provides a useful trap. Place the liquid in shallow receptacles, and put them where they will be most effective —that is, well away from food or liquid that might act as a counter-attraction.