INFLUENZA.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16359, 2 November 1918, Page 10

INFLUENZA.

NO ABATEMENT IN 'AUCKLAND. ACTIVITIES OF CITIZENS' committee. <rr.ESS . ASSOCIATION TELEGKAIO AUCKLAND, November 1. The influenza opidemic shows no abatement. Three more deaths arc reported. ' The Fire Brigade, Police Force, Telephone Exchange, and business 6taffs generally, are greatly depleted. The Citizens' Committee has asked the 'City Council for the ,use ofKilbryde, in l'arnell Park, as a temporary hospital, arid has appealed for volurf- ; tary workers, particularly ex-nurses, for service in the city, which lias beeu divided into blocks. Free medicine is to lie supplied where necessary. The committee also decided to ask th® Minister of Public Health to make the disease a subject for quarantine, in view of the fact that ships are possibJy on their way here from countries where the disease is of a severe type. The Education Board has been asseu to close the schools, and fumigate all buildings. . , .: , , • , , The Defence Minister is to bo asked to relievo doctors who are at present serving on« M©dical Boards, to sti(i in combating the epidemic.

Statements that appear in English medical journals regarding the influenza epidemic show that few cases havo proved fatal, and that grave complications are rare. This is reassuring, in view of tho cable messages received lately concerning the largo numbers or fatal cases in South Africa and America.. The "journal of Public Health says the duration of an epidemic in any one locality is from four; to eight weeks.. Lhiring this short ponod of time it has been estimated that some 40 per cent, of the nopulation fall victim to the disease.' 'This sudden, almost simultaneous, attack of largo numbers of people is duo to the very general suaceptibtlity to "tlio dis6&sc and its vory short incubation period. Influenza was at one time a notifiable disease in Now Zealand, but was removed from the list owing to the fact that it was found incontrollable by public health measures. Theoretically, notification, isolation and disinfection are called for, but in actual practice these measures must break down, tho journal states, owing to the impossibility cf making an exact diagnosis in tho early stages of an epidemic or in roil<l cases at any time; the rapid diffusion of the disease from such unrecognised cases, and the fact that, unlike tho common infectious diseases, influenza attacks ndults rather _ than children, and ndults are notoriously much harder to isolate than children. The virus of influenza has very slight resistance- to outside influences, and soon dies after leaving the body. The disease is not srreod to any extent, if at r.ll. b" infected articles, but is transmitted dire"tiv from one person to another in tho 'minute droplets of saliva given r-ff in coughing, sneezing, or even in talking.