Typhoid Check On 1000 Passengers

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29994, 1 December 1962, Page 10

Typhoid Check On 1000 Passengers

Officials from the Department of Health scoured New Zealand yesterday in an all-out effort to locate all passengers who arrived at Wellington on Wednesday aboard the 24,000ton British immigrant ship Stratheden. It is suspected that some passengers may be carriers of typhoid fever.

When the small army of Health Department officials left to search for the passengers after conferences at tiheir various district headquarters early yesterday • morning, they faced a task of some magnitude. About 1000 passengers, including < more than 800 Governmentassisted immigrants, disembarked at Wellington.

About 100 of the passengers have come to Christchurch. Since the passengers disembarked, confirmation was received from Australian officials that a member of the crew, believed to be a lift steword, who was taken to hospital in Melbourne on November 21, had typhoid fever, the Medical Officer of Health, Christchurch (Dr. L. F. Jepson) said yesterday. A suspected carrier of the fever, another member of

the Stinatheden’s crew, had been put into isolation in Wellington, he said. Officials told passengers there was absolutely no cause for concern and that it was “purely a routine check-up.” However, a close watch for any signs of typhoid is being kept until the 21-day incubation period is ended. Passengers have been instructed to call a doctor at the first sign of any disord-

ers such as headache, pains in the back and stomach, tenderness of the abdomen and higher temperature. They are not allowed to work in food-handling occupations until the 21 days have elapsed. Other passengers are being allowed to continue their occupations as usual. All have been told that a health official will keep in touch with them every few days. Names and addresses of relatives and friends visited in Australia by passengers have been taken “for the record,” but no action is to be taken unless other cases are confirmed.

The Press Association quotes the medical officer of health in Auckland (Dr. B. W. Christmas) as saying the risk of secondary infection from a typhoid contact is very slight. “We have had a number of occurrences in the past when passengers have disembarked in New Zealand and it has been afterwards discovered that they were typhoid contacts,” he said. “No further cases have ever come from them. The risk is very slight.”