OUTBREAK OF TYPHOID

Otago Witness, Issue 3823, 21 June 1927, Page 25

OUTBREAK OF TYPHOID

AUCKLAND, June 18. Six mild cases of typhoid, involving three nurses in the Whangarei District Hospital, and another five, cases in one Maori family in the Bay of Islands have been reported to the District Health Officer during the past week. The first of the Whangarei cases was that of a male Native from the same county, but from a different locality from the Maori family, which has been stricken. Before the case was recognised on Wednesday last three nurses fell victims —on June 10, June 13 and June 15. The other cases are those of a child and a young woman, aged 19. Tlie cases so far have been of a mild type. Dr Turbott, of the Auckland District Health Office, lias gone to Whangarei to investigate all the cases. A few typhoid cases have arisen in the Auckland health district lately following the return of Maoris from gatherings at Ratana, and from these meetings, which were held under conditions which were doubtful from a hygienic point of view, the disease has probably been conveyed by carriers throughout the province. At one time, stated Dr Chesson, Medical Officer of Health, to-day, typhoid was a continuous disease among the Natives, dug to the lack of sanitation and lack of hygienic methods of preparing food, but by the continual campaigns of antityphoid inoculation the disease has been checked, except for isolated cases which, whenever they occur, are immediately followed by an inoculation drive among the Natives in the district. Every Maori living under Native conditions should be inoculated against typhoid, added Dr Chesson.