EPIDEMIC RISK
Increase With Travel "The Press" Special Service AUCKLAND. July 21. Smallpox and plague were constant risks to New Zealand, said Dr. D. Taylor, director of health education with the St. John Ambulance Association, in Rotorua. Although New Zealand had been free of diseases requiring quarantine for many years, the risk remained and was growing with increased air and sea travel.
He called in particular for cautious measures at Mangere airport. He said greater air traffic would mean a higher chance that pestilential diseases could be brought into the country. Tracing the history of epidemics, Dr. Taylor said smallpox flared in Auckland and Wellington after being brought into the country by two ships in 1872. This scare led directly to the passing of the first Public Health Act. In 1900 a ship-borne bubonic plague epidemic led to the formation of the Department of Public Health. Since then New Zealand had been among the foremost countries of the world in the practice of public health. It was up to the people acting as individuals, and as a community, to retain public health today. Dr. Taylor added: “As Disraeli said, ‘The health of the people is really the foundation upon which all their happiness and prosperity as a State depends.”’
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Bibliographic details
Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30809, 22 July 1965, Page 12
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209EPIDEMIC RISK Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30809, 22 July 1965, Page 12
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