Illness outbreak at Queenstown

Press, 12 March 1985, Page 18

Illness outbreak at Queenstown

Sir,—Regarding the 3500 people who contracted gastro-enteritis in Queenstown late last year after a serious leak in the district water supply, and your article reporting a Health Department officer saying Queenstown was lucky to escape deaths, why was this outbreak not widely publicised at the time of the outbreak? My family and I visited Queenstown when many people had already been ill for two weeks, but we had not heard anything about it. If we, along with hundreds of tourists, had known this, we would not have made the trip and two of our family would have avoided being violently ill. I wonder if this was a case of poor reporting or did the local authorities keep quiet so as not to disrupt the inflow of the dollars? If it was the latter, I regard it as a criminal act to wilfully keep back information which might jeopardise the lives of innocent people. — Yours, etc., J. DUTHIE. February 26, 1985.

[Mr L. R. Boon, for the Medical Officer of Health, Invercargill, replies: “I appreciate your correspondent’s concern but can give an assurance that no wilful act to withhold information occurred at any time during this incident. During the initial four weeks of the outbreak, doctors and other health officials considered it to be some sort of gastric flu. There had never been any problems with the water before, so this was not considered. It was not until November 2 that the relationship between this illness and the water supply became apparent. Immediately this was realised, the local authority notified the public and took positive steps to render the water supply safe. The effectiveness is evidenced by the sharp decline in cases after that date. The reasoning behind our considering that we are lucky to have no deaths was due to the fact that Queenstown, being an international tourist centre, is vulnerable to serious exotic water diseases if the supply is contaminated in any way by sewage, instead of the less virulent cause evidenced in this case.”] t