INFANTILE PARALYSIS

Evening Star, Issue 22638, 3 May 1937, Page 11

INFANTILE PARALYSIS

A CORRESPONDENT'S COMPLAINTS NO RESTRICTIONS ON TRAVELLING A correspondent has written complaining about the admission to the St. Clair School of a boy who came from Wellington about three weeks qgo and who last week contracted infantile paralysis. “ Here we have a case,” states the. letter, “of a child coming from an area where paralysis was particularly bad at the time and entering a school here with no restrictions whatever, later developing the disease, and possibly spreading it among other children, Wellington schools are closed and children’s movements rotricted, and yet some official of the .Education Board . . . permits the acting head master to enrol this boy straight away. . . . When Dunedin was in the throes of tho epidemic Dunedin people were treated as outcasts by the northern people, .and we put up with all those indignities cheerfully, had to forego our annual holidays, and carefully restricted the movements of our children. Now we find a Wellington child coming here when we have been ‘ clear ’ for so long, and entering a school without any attempt being made to enforce restrictions. ... Ido not blame the boy’s parents, but I do blame the Education Board, who should by now have had enough experience of this disease to take ordinary precautions to safeguard children under its care.” When the letter was referred to Mr Gr. W, Carrington, tho secretary of the Otago Education Board, he said the authorities in Wellington had imposed no restrictions on Wellington school children travelling nor on their enrolment in schools in other districts. Anyone inquiring of the Health Department or of the Education Office would bo so informed.- Tho Wellington schools were not closed, as a matter of fact, when the boy left Wellington. One or two schools might have been closed, but there was no general closing of the schools at that time. All the restrictions on children were lifted several weeks before the schools opened on March 1. The district medical officer of health (Dr T. M’Kibbin) said there was no authority to prevent children travelling from Wellington or from anywhere else, or from attending a school anywhere in New Zealand. He understood that tho boy in particular came from Wellington with his parents to reside permanently in Dunedin. If travelling were prevented it would cause a great deal of confusion and trouble. The large boarding schools all over the Dominion, for instance, would not be able to take anything like their usual number of pupils. There was power to impose restrictions where it was known there had been contact with the disease, and in such a case action would be taken. FIVE CASES OVER WEEK-END. [Pen United Press Association.] HAMILTON, May 3. Five week-end cases of paralysis are in hospital, bringing the total to 30 for the Waikato.