QUARANTINE OF SHIPS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20234, 19 April 1929, Page 12

QUARANTINE OF SHIPS.

THREE COUNTRIES ONLY.

THE . PRACTICE IN BRITAIN

The fact, that smallpox has reached England, via France, where the patient arrived from the East, draws attention to the fact that in Britain and the Continent the port quarantine system, as New Zealand knows it, does not exist. Tho United States, Australia and New Zealand aro about the only countries in tho world where a ship bearing virulent infectious diseases may be refused a berth and sent with all on board into quarantine for an indefinite period, Tho practice in Britain when a dangerous contagious disease is carried by an arriving ship, is to send the patients to hospital and to allow all other people to land, but contacts are kept under surveillance wherever they go. It is not commonly known that the New Zealand quarantine system is occasionally criticised by competent visitors. One authority recently stated privately that the system whereby the whole of a ship's passengers can be sent into isolation on an island is more likely to spread the disease among them than otherwise. New Zealand, ho considered, was too panicky about the introduction of contagious diseases from overseas. Notwithstanding the huge amount of shipping arriving each week in Britain, without a ship ever being quarantined, the country was never swept by a devastating scourge of foreign origin.