FLY MENACE

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 58, Issue 4108, 4 March 1949, Page 10

FLY MENACE

USE OF D.D.T. DESTROY THEM NOW DANGEROUS TO MAN (By the Department of Health) The only good fly is a dead one. The only way to kill them is to go after them. The best place to go after them is where they breed. And the best time is particularly from October onwards. If success is to be judged by mere numbers, then the common house fly is the most successful insect in the world. Besides .being one of mankind’s most common enemies, it produces diseases. With the sole exception of the malarial mosquito, the common fly is of all creatures the most dangerous to man. All flies are detestable insects because they have dirty habits, live on filth, and spoil the food we eat. The favourite breeding place is in decomposing rubbish of any sort. Garbage, manure and compost heaps are particularly favoured. Flies carry disease germs from their breeding and feeding places then, when they feel like a bit of daintyfare they fly into the house for whatever food you have about. On this, they excrete or vomit their filthy germs; and dangerous germs, tqo, they* are. Typhoid and dysentry are spread by flies. And they carry the germs of “ summer diarrhoea,” which can be fatal to infants. Now is the time of year to determine that the war will be a deadly one against flies this summer. Fortunately we have a new weapon which has proved so effective that it’s, reported from America that almost an entire state has been cleaned up and people leave their doors open without flyscreens for the first time in living memory. The state was sprayed bit by bit by big teams of men operating the new insecticide, D.D.T. We can use the same means of killing flies inside our homes. The cure for them is to remove them. In any case keep food covered at all times. Remember that not only the flies but their breeding grounds must go, permanently, if we are to protect ourselves from this menace.