PREVENTABLE DISEASE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22878, 5 November 1937, Page 10

PREVENTABLE DISEASE

A preventable disease is taking the lives of 15 or 1G New Zealanders every year and disabling five times as many as it kills. Hydatids is the fell agent, one whose dread inroads on man and animal have been largely ignored. The GovernorGeneral, in his address at the opening of the .Royal Show,, has therefore performed a public service in fixing attention 011 the disease and in offering practical remedies for its gradual but complete elimination. Action is overdue. In the past ten years 1000 cases occurred in human beings, one in six proving fatal. Those who lived suffered prolonged if not permanent disablement. Last year cases totalled 133, the highest number so far recorded. This, in spite of the fact that, as Lord Galway says, "the prevention of hydatid disease is simple." Its elimination is easily possible by proper care of the carrier, the sheep dog. By the simple means set out by His Excellency, not only would the avoidable toll of human life be ended, but also the loss suffered by shecpowners from the same cause, estimated at £50,000 a year, would be saved. Hydatids are said by Sir Louis Barnett to infect half the 31,000,000 sheep in New Zealand and, although the effect in the flocks is apparently not so lethal as in man, the cost is heavy. Iceland has proved that hydatids can be completely eradicated. Obviously it would pay the New Zealand farmer to apply the easy remedies calculated to give this country a similar immunity. His Excellency's lead could well be followed up vigorously by the Department of Agriculture, seconded by the Department of Health, which should not suffer the multiplication of death and misery from an avoidable cause.