New Typhoid Case In Akaroa Area

Press, Volume C, Issue 29638, 7 October 1961, Page 10

New Typhoid Case In Akaroa Area

A second case of typhoid has occurred in the Akaroa district, where the Health Department is still searching for the source of infection of a case reported early last month.

The second typhoid victim is a member of the same family as the first, but now lives at Duvauchelle. Formerly, he spent some time in the same household as the first victim, whose house is on the outskirts of Akaroa. The first case was a 53-year-old man. and the second a man of 46. Both are in isolation in the Christchurch Hospital, where they are attended by “barrier nursing" techniques to prevent any possible spread of the disease to the staff and other patients.

The District Medical Officer of Health (Dr. L. F. Jepson) said yesterday that he thought there was no risk to any residents besides those in the same Maori family as the two known cases Another member of the family had contracted typhoid five years ago, and he felt sure that this must have been the source of the present infection, even though no definite proof of this had been found. Since the first case was confirmed, the»faeces of 40 members of the family or of clore contacts who had visited the victim’s household had been tested regularly for typhoid activity, but without result, said Dr. Jepson. As a result of the new case, the net would be widened to include more remote contacts, especially persons who had bad contact with both men. The testing was being done .^ e Pathology department °i the Christchurch Hospital. . , st raa i°r outbreak of typhoid in New Zealand was m Kaikoura in 1947, when <3 persons went down to the disease. On that occasion, the infection was traced to an earth closet used by a carrier. The jloset was above

a creek from which a dairyman drew water for washing down his cowshed. Dr. Jepson said that, in both households concerned in the present outbreak, pan privies were used and the sewage b’lried. A close watch was being kept on the mode and place of burial.

Typhoid was a difficult disease to trace because persons might be apparently clear from it for most of the time, but have some reservoir of infection in their body which every now and again spilled out into the faeces. Known carriers were tested every year, and a national register of known present and former carriers was kept in Wellington.