Untitled

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21970, 19 December 1936, Page 14

Beyond generally recommending avoidance of the congregation of children in public places the health authorities ha-9 so far given no specific instructions to parents about the precautions that should be taken to guard against the possibility of infection by infantile paralysis. The absence of this very necessary information, which should have been broadcast throughout the couritry by the Health Department in Wellington, is causing very considerable anxiety among those parents who realise the seriousness of the situation. The department has had ample time to prepare a statement and should certainly not leave it to interested societies and private practitioners to take the responsibility of issuing detailed instructions to the community. It would of course be a fatal mistake to encourage anything in the way of a panic, but it is nevertheless time that parents were awakened to their responsibility in the matter and that the Health Department officers in every district were given plenary authority to enforce, if necessary, all reasonable precautions against a spread of the disease. Parents have already been given ample warning of the dangers to which they are exposing their children by allowing them to congregate in crowded places. Unfortunately, many of them are not heeding the warnings that have been given and it looks as though more drastic action will have to be taken to protect the children, by compulsion if necessary, from the possible consequences of their parents' folly. It can be realised that it is not easy to deny children a visit to the city during the festivities of the Christmas season, but to give them that temporary pleasure at the possible expense of a life of suffering is sheer shortsighted stupidity. Parents should be made to realise that in neglecting any precautions they are endangering not only the lives and health of their own children but also th>. lives and health of other children with whom their own youngsters may later come in contact. The department will be woefully lacking in its duty if it delays any longer making a clear statement of all precautions that should be taken to avoid in Canterbury and Westland a repetition of the tragic epidemic that has occurred in Otago and should assert its full powers to ensure obedience to its instructions.