DEFECTIVE HOUSING

Otago Witness, Issue 3783, 14 September 1926, Page 18

DEFECTIVE HOUSING

ITS RELATION TO HEALTH.

By

D. P. H.

Throughout the civilised world to-day, there is a growing realisation of the direct and far-reaching effects which defective housing has upon the general health of the people, and vast sums of money are being spent on removing unhealthy areas and rebuilding them according to modern requirements. Here in New Zealand our problem is a comparatively simple one for the close settlement in towns dates back barely 60 years; yet already there are serious defects existing in the housing conditions in many of the large towns. A MIGHTY PROBLEM. There is, apparently, some inherent difficulty in arriving at a solution of the problem of satisfactory housing. This is readily understood when we see how intimately the problem of housing is interwoven with those of poverty, economics, alcoholics, delinquency and disease. This problem is not one of a day nor yet of a year. It is ever with us and notwithstanding the fact that we are more or less reconciled to its presence, there can be no doubt that far from being a gamble, money invested in its solution must eventually return a handsome bonus in the shape of the improved health and happiness of the coming generation. There is ako ample evidence that there would be less siekness and lower hospital returns as a result of raising the standard of housing up to a definite minimum. DISEASE AND OVERCROWDING. Statistical evidence as the direct bearing of defective housing on the incidence of disease is mainly supplied from the large towns of the Old World. Dr Chalmers, medical officer of health for Glasgow, has shown that if the deathrate of infants under one year in oneroomed apartments were indicated by the index 100, Mie infant death-rates in two, three, and four-roomed apartments would be found to be indicated by indices 78, 61, and 49 respectively In other words, a child bom in a one-roomed * dwelling has actually less than half the chance of living a year than has a child born in a dwelling of four rooms. In Dunedin, fortunately, owing to the efforts of the Plunket Society, and to the excellent system of drainage and refuse collection provided by the municipal authorities, the effects of defective hous ing in certain areas of the city are largely counteracted. We can certainly congratulate ourselves that our infantile mortality rate is the lowest in the world, but we cannot regard the position with complacency, for every baby is a living and developing organism, hound h- its nature to react the influences of its environment: and that these influences are prejudicial to child health is shown by the findings of the school medical officers when they examine the child at the age of five vears. There are many other evidences that defective housing is responsible for an increased incidence of communicable disease. In this country, about 90 per cent, of such diseases are transferred from the sick to the healthy by the direct communication of infection in the secretions of the mouth, nose, and throat. This direct transfer in enclosed spaces occurs readily for distances up to five feet. The late war supplied convincing evidence as to the serious effect of overcrowding (in sleeping quarters particularly), and the incidence of infectious disease. Whenever war emergency resulted in soldiers sleeping in hutments or in transports in such a way that the distance between the mouths of adjacent soldiers was reduced to below four feet, there inevitably followed epidemics of sore throats, colds, influenza, diphtheria, and such like infections. What applied in war applies in' peace, and wherever there is overcrowding in rooms there is a greater chance of infection, not only in the diseases mentioned, but also in pulmonary tuberculosis. A recent report of the inspecting medical officers showed that in one block of 33 houses in Dunedin, 11 had a history of one or more cases of tuberculosis occurring in them within recent years and in three instances there had been several cases in the one family. The intensive study of the devastating influenza epidemic of 1918 stresses certain facta. That epidemic, which created such havoc in a few weeks, was the product of vears of preparation, and just tuberculosis. the lesson which jt teaches is that the only sure (Jefence against epidemic dis ease of this character is to raise the whole standard of life in every city in the world. It Can no longer he regarded as a matter of indifference that a percentage of the people in our own city are living under unhealthy and insanitary conditions. The fault is not theirs. In one block of buildings which came under the notice of the Health Department recently, 60 per cent, had no baths. Such a state of affairs immediately puts the inmates of these houses at a distinct disadvantage in the fight ngninst disease, in which the first essential is cleanliness. Besides this, in such insanitary areas thoroughly clean clothing and dwellings are an impossibility. But there are also diseases other than infectious in which housing conditions play an important part. In houses situated in back alleys into which the sun never enters, and where provision for lighting and ventilation is defective, the absence of sunlight and the atmosphere of stale air are powerful influences in producing Anaemia, and nutritional disturbances, of which rickets is a striking example. Happily advanced rickets is rare in Dunedin hut definite cases are sent to hospital from those insanitary areas from

time to time. There is also evidence of other nutritional disturbances of which unhealthy environment is the direct cause. Living in these slum areas has also • pronounced effect on the nervous system, and although it is difficult to say to what degree this is responsible for the increased degree of nervous instability, there can be no denial of the fact that overcrowding and gloomy, depressing surroundings and too constant and interminable association with other people are productive of disturbed sleep, and nervous fatigue which may ultimately lead to more serious nervous weaknesses. There is no doubt that there is also a close relation between the dampness of houses and the incidence of asthma, bronchitis and rheumatism, all of which have been found to be unduly prevalent in areas where the dampness is excessive. Unfortunately it is those who spend most time in the home—the mothers and the children—who suffer most. The time must come when, for the sake of the rising generation, sordid slums, illlit, ill-ventilated, badly built and damp dwellings will cease to exist, and with their passing will come the new order of things—comfort, light space.-air. and improved health and social conditions for all.