HEALTH OFFICERS' WORK

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 136, 5 December 1918, Page 7

HEALTH OFFICERS' WORK

DISSATISFACTION EXPRESSED. CBI .TELEGRAPH.—PRESS ASSOqATION.) v AUCKLAND, 4th December. The following letter, signed by members of the Press delation, quarantined cm the Makura, has beeirreceived by the Herald:— \ "From a strong sense of public duty we 'deem it right to direct public.attention to the circumstances following the quarantining of the Madura's passengers and crew at Auckland. The vessel arrived on Saturday evening and anchored in the fairway off Eangitoto Island, moving up- to the quarantine station opposite Motuihi on Sunday' morning. When three medical officers ;of the Health Department boarded her they made rfo examination or inspection of the passengers, but were supplied with temperature's and pulse readings previously taken. After a short stay the Department's officers left the steamer, and up to the time of writing, 60 hours after arrival, no official intimation has been given of the decision arrived at by the Department. -V "Some half-dozen patients who had been seen by the health officers were .removed to Motuihi. The steamer 'has since been detained in quarantine without a visit from the medical authorities. No precautions have been taken by theDepartment to safeguard the passengers or crew, except the removal of the patients beforementioned, and no advice given by it' that would tend to lessen the risk' of contracting the disease by the. large number qf people on board, nor has any fumigation of the ordinary cabins or saloons taken place. ■ These are naked facts which admit of no contradiction, and betray an extraordinary lack of appreciation of what is due to over 500 people who are compulsorily detained on the steamer.

,"The elementary step to check the spread of- influenza, is to prohibit the public congregating together in numbers. In America, Canada, and New Zealand, when lighting the epidemic, theatres, churches, hotels, and other places of public resort were closed, or restrictions enforced. Yet on the Makura 520 people have been forced to live in crowded quarters by the action of the . public health authorities, without any. means of protecting themselves from contracting the disease, and without one single word of advice being given to them by the Department's medical officers, whose perfunctory treatment of the position is the subject of sevore comment by those who are condemned to indefinite imprisonment under conditions which render .them specially liable to contraction of the disease.,

"The New Zealand Health Department having exer<*ied its power to quarantine the passengers and crew of the Makura, should surely recognise its responsibility to en6nve that the health and well-being' of those who, are affected ty its action will be fully and completely safeguarded. According to newspaper reports ah inhalation chamber was to be established on the vessel. This has not yet been done, and !no member of the Health Department's staff is, or has been, on board since Sund,ay to see that the necessary requirements are carried out. . "We now urge on the Department that it should at once reverse the decision it is reported to have arrived at to keep the passengers on board the Makura, and take steps to have them removed to healthy eurroundings ashore. We cannot help adding reluctantly, but very deliberately, that. in our Judgment the attitude of the Department is less likely to safeguard than to menace the health of those on board the Makura,"