ANOTHER STEP FORWARD.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 140, 13 June 1919, Page 6

ANOTHER STEP FORWARD.

PNEUMONIA MADE NOTIFIABLE "INFECTIOUS" AND "DANGEROUS" DISEASES. Following upon the heels of a policy that has just been formulated in England, the Government of New Zealand has used its powers under section 12 of the Public Health Act of 1908 to declare certain types of influenza as infectious, and some of them as dangerous infectious diseases. The difference from all points of view between those classed as "dangerous infectious" and those called "infectious" is great. Although in both classes notification to the Health Department is compulsory, the notification in the dangerous ' t y P e gives the health officers peculiarly wide powers that enable tliem to remove the patient almost wherever they wish, while with the ordinary infectious disease the patient may simply be removed to an isolation ward in a hospital. The diseases gazetted this week as "infectious" are: Acute primary pneumonia, pneumonic influenza, septicaemic influenza, and fulminant influenza. Those listed as "dangerous infectious" are: Pneumonic influenza, septicaemic influenza and fulminant influenza. This latter is the type where the attack is almost instantaneous, and develops very rapidly.

Dr. Makgill, Chief Health Officer here, says the officers of his department are well pleased by the new notice, which offers them the extra powers they need in dealing with epidemics nnd the likely causes of such. In particular the wishes of medical men of experience have been met by classing acute primary pneumonia as infectious, because this disease is often the first indication- of something even more serious. Influenza itself is, of course, only the "advance agent," as it were, that prepares the way for other disease organisms that give the symptoms of influenza all these different names.