POLIOMYELITIS EPIDEMICS

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27634, 15 April 1955, Page 14

POLIOMYELITIS EPIDEMICS

OUTBREAKS IN N.Z. REVIEWED

INCIDENCE AS HIGH AS IN OTHER COUNTRIES

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, April 14. Epidemics of poliomyelitis had occurred in New Zealand at roughtly 10-year intervals, said Dr. A. M. Murphy, of the pathological department of the Auckland Public Hospital, in a recent number of the “Medical Journal.” The last epidemic that followed this pattern was in 1947. Dr. Murphy was surveying the poliomyelitis epidemic of 1952-53, which was unusual in a number of its aspects. *’ Epidemics had occurred in New Zealand in 1916, 1925, 1937 and 1947, said Dr. Murphy. The epidemic that began in July, 1952, reached its peak in September and October, and subsided in February, 1953. Intervals of four and five years between epidemics were more consistent with figures from large metropolitan areas overseas, and the epidemic’might have been a result of the closer contact with other countries that had developed in recent years. Dr. Murphy said the figures available for the Auckland district showed that areas with relatively few cases in the 1947-48 epidemic were most severely affected five years later, and vice versa.

This suggested that a similar virus caused both outbreaks.

In a report on advances in poliomyelitis research in a later “Medical Journal,” Dr. J. E. Caughey, of the Otago Medical School, said that the incidence cf poliomyelitis in New Zealand was as high as anywhere else in the world. It was a definite possibility that the country could be affected by a large epidemic of the kind recently experienced in Denmark and California, where there had been a high incidence of bulbar cases. Dr. Caughey based his warning on trends in other countries where there had been epidemics in conditions parallel with those here.