PLAGUE AND THE RATS

Evening Post, Volume CII, Issue 138, 8 December 1921, Page 4

PLAGUE AND THE RATS

Two main lines of defence against the introduction of plague are suggested by the Minister of Public Health (Mr. C. J. Parr). They are rigid inspection of shipping ,at the ports and increased vigilanoe and activity on the part of .local authorities. No one familiar with the bubonic plague as it is to be seen in the East regards it with indifference. It spares no race and knows no age. None can be sure of immunity from it; and it is most infectious. The best means of dealing with it is rat extermination, and the best method of accomplishing that end is unremitting cleaning up; in short, starving out the rats that cannot be caught and destroyed. Such a drastic step as Mr. K. A. Wright proposed, of cutting off all shipping communication with Australia, naturally did not commend itself to the Minister. But even that step may have to be seriously contemplated if the plague increases in Sydney or elsewhere in Australia, whence it may be conveyed \o this country. A cablegram from Brisbane yesterday stated that of thirty-four cases of plague twenty-two people had succumbed. This is a very heavy percentage of mortality. It is one that should not only make local bodies in New Zealand think, but act, and that with promptitude and firmness. There are weather and other conditions in both Sydney and Brisbane favourable to plague that do not exist in New Zealand, bm>, there are plenty of rats in all the seaports of the Dominion ready to become hosts for the plague-bear-ing flea. The danger lies in the rats and the accumulation.. of garbage that harbours rats. "It would be crass folly to wait until the disease came here. Now is the time to act. The Minister is convinced, he says, that the Wellington City Council has not yet seriously tackled the rat problem. Rhe is wrong he should be corrected;' if he is right, then it is high time Wellington got systematically to work ; time, too, that the citizens'themselves were organised to co-operaie with the medical men to repel the possible introduction of the disease.