CHOLERA EPIDEMIC IN EGYPT IS UNCHECKED

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 October 1947, Page 5

CHOLERA EPIDEMIC IN EGYPT IS UNCHECKED

(Rec. 2 p.m.) CAIRO, October 13. It is officially announced that there were 114 deaths from cholera in Egypt in the past 24 hours. This is a record figure for any one day. A Ministry of Health communique states that since the beginning of the cholera epidemic there have been 3613 cases and 873 deaths. The Health Minister, Dr Iskander Bey, said the situation in the Dakahlia province in the north-western part of the Nile Delta was very bad. The assistant chief of the Cairo Health Department said the capital was free of cholera in epidemic form. Planes sprayed 14,200 acres with D.D.T. A New Delhi message says that with the Indian and Pakistan Governments struggling to prevent a cholera epidemic, Mr Gandhi appealed to refugees to overcome their “deplorable lack of social hygiene” and to introduce disciplined sanitation in camps. The under-staffed New Delhi administration, with month-old heaps of garbage, half-burnt buildings and rotting foodstuffs providing a breedground for disease-carrying mosquitoes, appealed for volunteers with lorries to assist in a clean-up. The Government is also trying to obtain possession of property belonging to Moslem evacuees' pending the rightful owners’ return.