ISOLATION OF INFLUENZA PATIENTS.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume VIII, Issue 301, 22 November 1918, Page 4

ISOLATION OF INFLUENZA PATIENTS.

CARELESSNESS IN PRIVATE PLACES. Some comment has been made by officials of the Hs&lth Department by reason of the fact that in the course of their house-to-house visitation they have encountered a surprising amount 01 carelessness concerning the vital principle of the isolation of sufferers. To this is attributed the rapid spread of the epidemic in Wellington. “How era it surprise anyone,” said one officer yesterday, “when you see hundreds of cases in housesand hotelsand boardinghouses where no attention is being paid to isolating the case, and where everyone in the house saunters in and put of the room in which the patient lies, without dreaming of the risk they are taking of infection? Few people think of hanging a disinfecting sheet where the door should be, yet the malady is far more contagious than half-a-dozen infectious diseases are where such ordinary precautions are insisted upon. How can a wife help catching the disease if she insists on_ inhabiting the same room as her suffering husband? It would be a miracle if she did not become infected. Children, too, are allowed to invade the sick-room, as though the patient, only had a cold or a sore foot. It would be far better if parents would send the children out into the open street or th* nearest recreation ground—anything to Reap them away from, the house. “ Wellington is now paying for her overcrowded state. Yesterday we found some twelve or fifteen Assyrians crowded into one tiny little place in Raining street— a hovel reeking with humanity. One of them was taken away in a bad state, and died. Is it any wonder if the others develop the disease? In another place we found a man in a’maniacal condition in the same room with s» p hild in a dying state. If such conditions are to prevail, and people will bo stupid enough to encourage contagion, I am afraid we have not reached thei worst of the epidemic yet. In a few places we have visited people have had the sense to take precautions, but such are in a distinct minority.”