HYDATIDS

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 December 1934, Page 8

HYDATIDS

PREVENTION QUITE SIMPLE. That the dissemination of hydatids by dogs could easily be prevented, if only people would trouble to observe the simple precautions necessary to stamp out the disease, is the opinion expressed by prominent members of the medical profession in New Zealand. While hydatids is not particularly prevalent in Wellington, cases occur in the hospitals from time to time, according to Dr W. F. Findlay, of the Wellington District Health Department. “The disease is bound to be common in a sheep-farming community; that explains its frequent incidence in Canterbury,” said Dr Findlay. When asked to comment on the reported utterance of Dr C. E. Kerens, Professor of Bacteriology at the Otago University Medical School, who drew attention to the incidence of hydatids in New Zealand, Dr A. B. Pearson, the Christchurch Hospital pathologist, remarked that there was no doubt that if the practice of feeding raw sheep offal to dogs were discontinued, as Dr Kerens recommended, the occurrence of hydatids would be reduced almost to vanishing point. Dr Pearson said that as far as he knew the disease was more prevalent in Canterbury than in any other part of New Zealand, so that measures for the elimination of the disease would commend themselves to the people of that province. Dr Pearson said it was not generally known that the disease could be caught by human beings from dogs alone, and not from rabbits or sheep. He explained that the disease in dogs took the form of a worm, and in other animals and human beings of a cyst. It was prevalent in human beings in nearly all sheep countries, such as Australia, New Zealand, and South America. It was also very prevalent in Iceland, where the inhabitants were just as closely in touch with their dogs as wore the inhabitants of sheep countries. The dog was the host of the disease, and was responsible for its spread. Human beings could catch the- disease from water or vegetables ; with which infected dogs had come in contact. Before much was known of ■ the disease no one objected to raw sheep offal being thrown to the dogs, but even now, when medical men had made it. plain that the practice maintains the disease among dogs, most persons appeared to disregard the pre- j cautions that, would quickly stamp it ■ cut. The chances of being the un- J lucky persons who fell victims to the disease, said Dr Pearson, were com- j paratively small, and most persons £ thought the precautions were not i worth while.

Infection, however, was a very real danger, lor Dr Louis Barnett’s researches in Dunedin had shown (hat. mere Ilian 70 per cent, of the sheen dogs in New Zealand were, infected. Such precautions as (he partial cooking of sheep offal before feeding it to the dogs would quickly reduce the incidence of the disease to a point at which its danger to the community would become almost negligible.