INFLUENZA MORTALITY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17040, 23 December 1918, Page 6

INFLUENZA MORTALITY.

The latest return furnished by the Minister for Public Health of the deaths from influenza or pneumonia in the four cities again displays the misleading features to which attention was drawn when the first statement was made a fortnight ago. On that occasion Mr. Russell used an incomplete return of registrations to support his absurd contention that housing conditions in Auckland were responsible for a greater severity of the epidemic in this city than in other parts of the Dominion. The falsity of any conclusion upon such partial figures having been pointed out, the Minister might have been expected to withhold further returns until he could accompany his statistics with a guarantee of reasonable accuracy, without which they are useless and deceptive. Yet the second return, issued by the Minister on Thursday, shows a similar discrepancy from the actual facts. The figures for Wellington illustrate the failure of the registration system to present a full account of the epidemic mortality. According to Mr. Russell's figures there were 126 deaths in Wellington during " November from influenza; an official report to the Wellington City Council shows a total of 721 interments and cremations, compared with 63 in November of last year. If the increaso of 658 burials is attributable to influenza, tho total mortality in Wellington during the epidemic would have been actually greater than in Auckland. But this is not a matter of comparison between cities, as the Minister seems to suppose. The public has a very natural desire to learn exactly the extent of tho toll which the epidemic has taken in the Dominion, and it has a right to insist upon official figures being compiled with care and without any partisan purpose. The withholding of the usual official statement at the end of November because the figures " might cause alarm " was an unnecessary precaution, but since tho epidemic has now practically been extinguished there can be no legitimate reason for delaying a complete review of the mortality and presenting to the public a statement that can be accepted as reliable and in agreement with the known facta..