All Five Babies In Unit Affected

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30413, 11 April 1964, Page 1

All Five Babies In Unit Affected

All five babies in a premature unit at the St. Helens Hospital have become ill with salmonellosis, and two died. The staff of the hospital are being tested to see if they are carriers of the disease, and those who give a positive reaction will be put off duty until the danger is considered over. Normal precautions at the hospital, such as restrictions on the mixing of staff from the various sections, have been tightened. “We are not particularly worried at the prospect of normal babies becoming infected, as the disease is normally mild, except in premature babies,” the medical

superintendent-m-chief to the North Canterbury Hospital Board (Dr. L. McH. Berry) said yesterday. One of the babies died on Thursday evening, the other earlier in the week. The three survivors were “getting on satisfactorily” yesterday, Dr Berry said. The two who died did so in the children's ward of the Christchurch Hospital, where they were sent on Monday after their condition had deteriorated. The others are still in the unit at St. Helens. In 1961, 128 notifications of salmonella infections (other than typhoid and paratyphoidB) were confirmed in New Zealand. There were three deaths: of a man and woman each in their 70s, and a man in his early 50s. The hospital board took control of the hospital from the Health Department 10 days ago.