THE LATE EPIDEMIC

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LIII, Issue 73, 27 March 1919, Page 5

THE LATE EPIDEMIC

VALUE OF FRESH AIR. CHRISTCHURCH, March 25. Before the Influenza Commission, Mr Leslie Bardie, chief sanitary inspector for the Christchurch City Council, said he had been connected with the Health Department for fifteen years, and had. come to the conclusion that some alteration was needed, not only in the Departrn® n t, but in the Public Health Act. For .instance* the clause regarding nuisances arising from offensive trades needed remodelling. He considered that infectious diseases, to stop overlapping by the various bodies, should be controlled by the local authority and not by the hospital hoards. Notwithstanding the leaps and_ bounds made by science and the great improvements in sanitation, infectious diseases had very large increased since they had been under the control of the hospital boards. He considered the increase was due to the overcrowding of schools and to fne inadequate methods of isolation employed in regard to houses in which cases of infectious disease occurred. Dr. J. F. Duncan, president of the Canterbury division of the British Medical Association, said the virulent type of influenza undoubtedly came to Christchurch from the North dux- , ing Carnival Week, when the conditionswere ideal for it spreading., Christchurch then became the distributing, centre for the South Island. With rpf ; gard to treatment, Dr. Duncan said that no drug had’ yet been proved to have any > curative effect on the disease. *