INFLUENZA OUTBREAK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 19, 24 January 1933, Page 6

INFLUENZA OUTBREAK.

The present wave of influenza in Europe, though not at present as serious as that which spread over the world just after the war, is yet sufficiently serious to carry a warning to nations not yet affected to be prepared, and to neglect no precautions to guard against it, or to deal with it should it reach them. Much of the fatality in the last great outbreak was due to insufficient preventive means being taken iu the first instance, and to lack of adequate facilities for dealing with it when it had broken out. The North Island suffered more than the South Island, because the South, being warned, was better prepared. The Health Committee of the League of Nations has issued a warning that the world economic crisis has now become so acute as to have serious effects on public health. The League Committee says that the direct effect of the crisis is under-nourishment, that a large number of unemployed in more than one country have not the means to obtain the minimum of food necessary for health. Indirectly, the insufficiency of food, through weakening the body, allows disease, and particularly tuberculosis, to gain hold more easily, and the psychological effect of prolonged unemployment may give rise to mental troubles. It is certainly worth noting that the undergraduates at Oxford, who enjoy a high standard of living, have escaped the disease, though most of the college servants are victims.

It is estimated that in the world to-day there "are some fifty or sixty millions of persons directly or indirectly affccted by unemployment, and thirty millions of these are wholly unemployed. Special health problems are arising out of the world depression both by the direct influence on individuals of malnutrition, poor housing, improper clothing and lack of proper recreation, and also by' the curtailment of budgets of agencies fdr the prevention of disease, the protection of public health, and the furnishing of hospital aiid social relief. The present outbreak sounds a warning note which cannot go unheeded.