COOK ISLANDS HEALTH

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28671, 22 August 1958, Page 6

COOK ISLANDS HEALTH

Full-Scale Attack

On Two Diseases (New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, August 21. Preparations for a full-scale attack on two health problems in the Cook Islands were outlined in Wellington today by Dr. D. D. McCarthy, Island Territories research officer of the Medical Research Council, Dunedin. Dr. McCarthy, who has just completed 14 months as relieving chief medical officer in the Cook Islands administration, has been engaged for six years on exhaustive surveys of filariasis (a threadworm disease) and intestinal worm infections, as the basis for properly-planned and effective control projects. Dr. McCarthy now has details of the distribution and density of filariasis to enable assessment of the proper dosage of the available drugs, chiefly hetrazan.

‘‘Tahiti has, in five years, achieved almost complete control in some areas, and much of their information will be of great value,” he said today. ‘‘Mosquito control and drug treatment must, however, go hand in hand—though hetrazan destroys the human ‘reservoir of infection,’ mosquito control destroys the carrier ‘ that can reinfect.”

The incidence of intestinal worm infection was high throughout the Cook Islands, said Dr. McCarthy. - Mass treatment was necessary using a fairly satisfactory range of drugs now available, but of these the most effective were expensive.